[open-humanities] CeRch seminar: Digitization and Collaboration in the Study of Religious History: Rethinking the Dissenting Academies in Britain, 1660-1860

[Stuart Dunn]

Digitization and Collaboration in the Study of Religious History: 
Rethinking the Dissenting Academies in Britain, 1660-1860

Simon Dixon and Rosemary Dixon, Queen Mary, University of London

Tuesday 13 March, 6.15pm, Anatomy Museum (directions: 
http://atm.kcl.ac.uk/location)
Followed by drinks

Register to attend at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2658496635
Do you tweet? Please use hashtag #cerchseminars

The writing of religious history has generally been the preserve of 
individual scholars, conducting their research alone in libraries and 
archives, using traditional research methods. Humanities computing, 
however, not only facilitates but also demands collaborative work. 
Bringing together humanists and scientists based at different 
institutions to work on collaborative research projects allows more 
ambitious schemes to be undertaken, new methodologies to be developed, 
and new histories to be written. The creation of online databases as a 
means of studying the history of religion aids collaboration not just on 
an individual project, but between discrete research projects addressing 
related subject matter. This chapter discusses the planning and 
implementation of two closely related projects, both of which are making 
significant advances in understanding the historical significance of 
religious dissent in the British Isles: A History of the Dissenting 
Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860; and Dissenting Academy 
Libraries and their Readers, 1720-1860. At the heart of the projects is 
a pressing need to develop a greater understanding of the significance 
of dissenting academies in the history of British Protestant dissent. 
The academies, first established in the 1660s, were intended to provide 
Protestant students dissenting from the Church of England with a higher 
education similar to that available in the English universities (Oxford 
and Cambridge).
The first of the two projects, which ran from 2008-2011, involved the 
collection of reliable empirical evidence about the academies and the 
creation of an online relational database containing information about 
the institutions, their tutors and students, and surviving archival 
material. This work underpins the research for a new multi-authored 
study: A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 
1660-1860. The libraries of the academies were central to the teaching 
they offered, and the Dissenting Academies Libraries project (2009-2011) 
involved the digital reconstruction of their holdings and loans through 
the creation of a Virtual Library System. As well as providing valuable 
data for contributors to the Dissenting Academies project, the project 
will change our understanding of the role of books within dissenting 
culture and education. In describing their work on these two projects, 
Rosemary Dixon and Simon Dixon will reflect on the potential of digital 
humanities methodologies to fundamentally alter the way in which 
historians of religion approach their work.

About the Speakers

Rosemary Dixon is a lecturer in early modern English literature at 
King’s College London. Rose’s research is concerned with the literary 
and religious culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with 
a particular focus on the history of the book. Her PhD thesis on John 
Tillotson (1630-94) concentrated on printed sermons, which were among 
the most successful and popular books published during this period. This 
research will form the basis of her first book: a study of the 
commercial, theological, and cultural life of the printed sermon in 
Restoration and eighteenth-century England. Rose is particularly 
interested in the histories of libraries, and what they can reveal about 
the ways that the readers of the past perceived, organised, and used 
their books. Before joining King’s, she was postdoctoral research fellow 
for the AHRC-funded ‘Dissenting Academy Libraries and their Readers’ 
project, a collaboration between Queen Mary, University of London and Dr 
Williams’s Library. A major outcome of the project is the Virtual 
Library System, an innovative online reconstruction of the holdings and 
loan records of dissenting academy libraries.

Simon Dixon is a research assistant in the Faculty of History at the 
University of Oxford, working on ‘The Professions in Nineteenth-Century 
Britain and Ireland’. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the 
Dissenting Academies Project from June 2008 until May 2011. With Inga 
Jones he created Dissenting Academies Online: Database and Encyclopedia 
and is a contributor to the multi-authored volume, A History of the 
Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860. His work at Oxford 
involves the construction of a prosopographical database of 
nineteenth-century professionals and will lead to a series of articles 
and the development of a major research project. His doctoral thesis on 
‘Quaker Communities in London, 1667- c1714’ was completed at Royal 
Holloway in 2005 and is currently being revised for publication as The 
Quakers in London, 1667-1714. His research makes extensive use of 
digital technologies, in particular the construction of databases to 
manage and analyse large and complex sets of historical data and the 
creation of high impact research resources such as Dissenting Academies 
Online. and is a contributor to the multi-authored volume, . His work at 
Oxford involves the construction of a prosopographical database of 
nineteenth-century professionals and will lead to a series of articles 
and the development of a major research project. His doctoral thesis on 
‘Quaker Communities in London, 1667- c1714’ was completed at Royal 
Holloway in 2005 and is currently being revised for publication as . His 
research makes extensive use of digital technologies, in particular the 
construction of databases to manage and analyse large and complex sets 
of historical data and the creation of high impact research resources.

-- 
Dr Stuart Dunn
Lecturer
Centre for e-Research
Department of Digital Humanities
King's College London

www.stuartdunn.wordpress.com

Tel +44 (0)207 848 2709
Fax +44 (0)207 848 1989
stuart.dunn at kcl.ac.uk

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