The second issue of the VOICES project newsletter has been released this week, outlining the team’s latest research developments and digital initiatives.
Among the highlights is a new study titled “Digitising Death: Benchmarking Genealogical Data and Recovering Women’s Histories in Early Modern Ireland.” The research brings together researchers including Bronagh Ann McShane, Diego Rincon-Yanez, Felix Vanden Borre, Jane Ohlmeyer, and Declan O’Sullivan. Their work explores how digital methods can help recover women’s experiences from fragmented and often overlooked archival sources.
The VOICES project, based at Trinity College Dublin, also marked International Women’s Day in March with a blog post showcasing how digital tools are being used to uncover the experiences of ordinary Irish women in the early modern period. In the post, Principal Investigator Jane Ohlmeyer and researcher Lucy McKenna outline how the project is transforming large volumes of unstructured historical material into a searchable Knowledge Graph.
Built using Semantic Web and Linked Open Data principles, the VOICES Knowledge Graph connects dispersed archival records, making them interoperable and more accessible for researchers. The system expands on digital infrastructure developed by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, which has already mapped over 10,000 notable individuals from Irish history, primarily sourced from the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Read the newsletter here.
