Bug Hunt 2020 [cancelled - Covid 19]

New

This programme is an opportunity to learn, through practical experience and shared investigation, how to apply digital methods for exploring and analysing a body of archival texts. The core of the programme will be 5 x 2 hour classroom based sessions supplemented by group and individual work on tasks related to the project design, delivery and documentation in between sessions. In addition to attending all five face-to-face sessions, participants should set aside an additional 8-10 hours over the duration of the course for work on project-related tasks.

During the programme we’ll work together on a particular topic: how insects were represented in books created for children in the 19th century. This question will help us to think about how children’s encounters with the natural world might have been framed and shaped by their reading. We’ll work on digital collections of 19th century children’s books exploring how such collections are built and how they can be used for machine reading. We’ll develop specific research questions and you’ll learn how to explore them using different tools for textual stylistic analysis. At the end, we’ll present findings and consider the implications of what we’ve discovered.

Topics covered include;

• The development of methods for machine reading the archive – ideas, motivations and ethics • Children’s books of the long 19th century – a beginner’s guide • Designing a small-scale investigation • Building a collection of digital texts • Transforming texts into searchable data • Analysing stylistic patterns in the data

This programme is open to graduate students and staff at the University of Cambridge. PhD students and Early Career Researchers have priority for the scheme, but MPhil students are also very welcome to apply.

No specialist knowledge of children’s books, literary or linguistic methods, or experience of using digital tools is required. You just need a curiosity about how insects are presented to children in reading matter created for them, and how this might shape their understanding of the natural world.

Number of sessions: 5

For participants to: 1) develop an understanding of some of the strengths and limitations of ‘machine reading the archive’ 2) gain practical experience of a sequence of design and development processes entailed in completing a small-scale ‘machine reading the archive’ project 3) gain practical experience of developing archive texts as digital data and analysing that data stylistically 4) collaborate with other participants to achieve, visualise and present the answers to specific research questions over the course of one term

For participants to explore how digital methods for the stylistic analysis of texts might add to their research methods repertoires.

The sessions will usually have 3 parts: a seminar covering key concepts, a hands-on workshop using tools to create and transform texts/data, and time for collaborative investigation of a group research question.

Participants will need to bring a laptop to each session. A tablet will not be sufficient for the practical workshop component. Some free software tools will need to be downloaded: advice, instructions and support will be given during the course.