The Digital Panopticon PhD Studentships - digital crime/penal history

[Sharon Howard]

The Digital Panopticon is a four-year international digital history project to link together existing and new genealogical, biometric and criminal justice datasets held by different organisations in the UK and Australia, exploring the impact of the different types of penal punishments on the lives of 66,000 people sentenced at The Old Bailey between 1780 and 1875. We have six PhD studentships available on various topics on 18th-19th century prisoners and convicts, spread across the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Tasmania. More information about the studentships can be found on our website at http://www.digitalpanopticon.org/?p=597. 

Members of Antiquist may be particularly interested in the following studentship, which will be based at Sheffield:

 

The Impact of Digital Resources in the History of Crime

This project will examine the impact of the widespread availability of digital resources on attitudes towards crime and its history.  Core case studies will include the Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Founders and Survivors (records of the 73,000 men women and children who were transported to Tasmania), and, following its launch, the Digital Panopticon website. This project will investigate both academic and non-academic uses of internet information provided in the UK and Australia, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.  A wide range of sources can be used to measure the extent to which these sites have shaped how the history of crime has been written, and to assess their impact on users’ perceptions of the crimes and punishments, including individual criminal lives, documented on these websites.  It will also be possible to investigate how using these resources has shaped wider attitudes towards crime and punishment in contemporary society.  The studentship will appeal to researchers interested in the history of crime, public history, and the digital humanities. 

Deadline (extended): Monday 28 July 2014 (interviews 11-12 August)

This studentship is funded by the AHRC and consequently is open to UK/EU students only. It will cover tuition fees and a maintenance grant. For more information, and to apply, go to http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/scholarships/projects/digitalresources