Last week, Dr Alex Randles, Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Knowledge Graph for Irish History project at Trinity College Dublin School of Computer Science and Statistics, presented the paper “VRTI Knowledge Graph Explorer: Adoption, Use and Impact” at the prestigious European Semantic Web Conference 2026 in Dubrovnik.
The paper received the conference’s ‘Best In-Use Paper Award’ in recognition of the real-world impact of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) Knowledge Graph Explorer. Co-authored with fellow researchers Peter Crooks, Lynn Kilgallon, Lucy McKenna and Declan O’Sullivan, it showcases the adoption and broader impact of the Knowledge Graph Explorer.
Established in 2016, the VRTI is a national initiative dedicated to digitally reconstructing the Public Record Office of Ireland, which was destroyed during the 1922 Civil War fire. The project combines historical research with advanced information technologies to create one of Ireland’s largest digital historical archives.
The VRTI Knowledge Graph Explorer was developed to make complex historical data more accessible to researchers and the public through an intuitive interface for exploring the Knowledge Graph for Irish History (KGIH), Ireland’s first five-star linked open data resource for historical research.
