The VOICES research project at Trinity College Dublin has marked International Women’s Day with a new blog post highlighting how digital tools are helping uncover the lives of ordinary Irish women from the early modern period.
In the post, VOICES Principal Investigator Jane Ohlmeyer and researcher Lucy McKenna describe how the project is transforming vast amounts of unstructured historical data into a searchable “Knowledge Graph”. The technology uses the principles of the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data to connect fragmented archival material and make it interoperable for historical research.
The VOICES Knowledge Graph builds on digital infrastructure created by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland project, which already models more than 10,000 notable figures from Irish history, largely drawn from the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
By adding new records from sources including the 1641 Depositions, Dublin city archives and wills held at The National Archives, the VOICES team has created 2,345 new entries for early modern Irish women. Before this work, the system contained just 54 entries for women from the same period.
Researchers say the expanded dataset will make it easier to trace the experiences, networks and roles of women who have long been underrepresented in historical records.
Learn more by reading the blog post here.
