The National Archives
Search our website
  • Search our website
  • Search our records

Posts tagged 'academic'

24
Wed Apr
2013

Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships

Posted by Victoria Lain in Records and research

Research at The National Archives is going from strength to strength! We have more good news to report as The Thames Consortium, comprised of The National Maritime Museum, The National Portrait Gallery and The National Archives has been awarded six Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDPs) per year for the next three years to support doctoral students.

Page of the order book of the Sequestration Committee

Page of the order book of the Sequestration Committee includes an entry relating to the case of Lady Mary Bankes, who was attempting to secure the return of family estates on behalf of her children while at the same time attempting to defend Corfe Castle from falling into the hands of Parliament (SP 20/1, vol 3, 22 September 1645)

The CDP studentships are distributed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to sustain and promote high-quality research and skills in the sector. Maintaining the skills base in the arts and humanities is vital, and The National Archives will now be able to extend more opportunities for interdisciplinary research, knowledge exchange and training. We are really pleased to be involved and are thrilled that students will have access to a museum, an art gallery and an archive through which to explore their themes.

Continue reading »

21
Mon Jan
2013

Past and future events

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research
Some of you have probably attended one or more of our events and, for those that live further afield, you’ve probably heard some of our podcasts. Whether it be the regular Thursday afternoon talks, conferences, seminars, workshops or training – there’s always plenty going on.

Last week we hosted a particularly fascinating and well attended event called Mining the Archives: A beginners guide to using historical records.  This was the launch of a programme of events happening throughout 2013. We have invited writers of both historical fiction and non-fiction books to give a talk about how they have used the archives to research their publications. Each month of 2013 we’ll feature a different writer. Read more about next month’s author.

Speaker Mark Dunton

Speaker Mark Dunton

Continue reading »
8
Wed Aug
2012
2

Research publications

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research

Colleagues at The National Archives are busy people! Not only are they working hard to select, preserve and make accessible the public record, they’re also carrying out research and publishing it.

Our business plan sets out our core functions but it’s research that underpins everything we do. Research is essential to ensure that we are moving in the right direction and constantly improving and innovating.

Previous blogs have outlined the many different types of research we get involved in. Disseminating research findings can be done in different ways; nowadays websites, twitter feeds, blogs, the media and even Youtube are all used to publicise research. However, staff at The National Archives are dedicated to publicising via the more traditional academic routes too:

  • books
  • book chapters
  • essays or articles in books
  • journal articles
  • published lectures
  • Conference papers
  • reviews
  • electronic publications

In 2009, to celebrate and recognise the research that colleagues do, we decided to launch The National Archives Research Prize. The Prize is in recognition of the most outstanding peer-reviewed article or book chapter written by a member of staff.

Continue reading »

23
Mon Jul
2012
2

Reflections of a Collaborative Doctoral Award student

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research

Over the last few years The National Archives has been highly successful in expanding its partnerships with universities by co-sponsoring a number of collaborative doctoral award students. We currently have four students working with us and two more that will be starting their study next term. Their research covers the disciplines of history, technology and archives and information studies.

Recently the first of our collaborative doctoral students, Jenny Bunn, was awarded her PhD.

Jenny tells us more about her experience…

Continue reading »
11
Mon Jun
2012
4

University Challenge

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research

I’ve just googled ‘how many universities are there in the UK?’ and, according to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) website, ‘there are over 300 institutions in the UCAS scheme including universities, colleges of higher education and further education colleges that offer HE courses’.  I’m hesitant to agree to visit them all but, nevertheless, the Research Team at The National Archives are keen to visit as many as is relevant and practicable to talk to staff and students about the work we do here.

We’ve already visited a number of universities over the past year and have presented on a number of different topics from the history of The National Archives and the Public Record Office to the challenges of developing a new catalogue.

Just a few weeks ago we were at the University of East Anglia presenting at an interdisciplinary post graduate research seminar on ‘The Archive’, in all its aspects from organisational to philosophical and critical approaches.  Organisers asked for more information about the ‘Digital Archive’ specifically so we were able to call upon the expertise of colleagues in the Digital Preservation department who came along with us to present.

Continue reading »
16
Mon Apr
2012

Grants and Academic Support Panel (GASP)

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research

We’re always keen to hear from people about ideas for collaborative working. We regularly hear from academics who want to talk about new and interesting collaborative research projects. Usually, after lots of meetings, phone calls and emails, ideas are firmed up and a detailed proposal is put together.

But, obviously, we have limited resources and, therefore, can’t say yes to everyone and everything and that’s why we have a formal process to sift through the proposals, this is known as the Grants and Academic Support Panel (or, GASP). The Panel, which meets fortnightly, has representation from each of The National Archives’ Directorates (all at Head of department level) and is Chaired by the Head of Research, Dr Valerie Johnson.

Continue reading »
21
Wed Mar
2012

The big questions…

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research

As you’ve probably picked up from the themes of the blogs over the last few weeks, the work of The National Archives is extremely varied. In the Research Team we are keen to support new thinking across a range of topics from history and conservation to new technologies and digital preservation.

The Research Team consists of two people – myself and the Head of Research, Dr Valerie Johnson. In autumn last year Valerie and I started thinking about the organisation’s research strategy for 2012/13.  We decided to ask the Executive Team’s help in shaping some strategic research priorities to feed into our new strategy. With no constraints or instructions from the Research Team, the Directors were asked to simply come up with the four key questions that they wanted answered within the year. The kind of questions that were keeping them awake at night. They came up with the following:

  • What is the nature of the digital archival record?
  • How has digital changed the needs, expectations and nature of research and user behaviour?
  • How can we develop and exploit digital information extraction tools to help support digital selection and digital sensitivity review?
  • Can we develop Open Data models to provide better-quality, authentic and trusted data for use and re-use?
Continue reading »