VOICES Principal Investigator Jane Ohlmeyer recently delivered the Royal Historical Society’s 2025 Anniversary Lecture, Visible | Invisible: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland. Her talk explored the project’s innovative methods, the benefits and pitfalls of using AI at scale, and the emerging discoveries reshaping our understanding of early modern Irish women.
Ohlmeyer outlined the ambition of the five-year ERC-funded VOICES project, which unites historians and computer scientists to restore the lives of women in Ireland between c.1550 and 1700. Using transcription tools and generative AI, the team mines depositions, burial records, and other archival material to build a detailed knowledge graph mapping women’s relationships, activities, and experiences.
The lecture offered a first look at how these approaches are revealing overlooked figures and reframing women’s roles in early modern society, highlighting both the promise of advanced technology and the complexities it introduces to historical research.
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