Who Were the Nuns?
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Grant Holder:
Michael Questier
The project is a prosopographical study of the English convents in exile during the period 1600-1800 when it was illegal to be a nun in Britain. Key research questions include a broad response to the question 'Who were the nuns?' This involves locating the members in their family, religious, political and economic context and identifying the support networks sustaining the convents over two centuries. By incorporating qualitative data analysis into the quantitative databases to draw upon the rich array of surviving sources to understand the convents as sites of cultural production and intellectual activity to consider their contribution to English Catholicism. To understand how the links between the American members and the English convents were developed.
| Project start date: 2008-09 | Project end date: 2011-08 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| 2d scanning | Practice-led research |
| 2d Scanning and photography | Data capture |
| Accessibility analysis | Strategy and project management |
| Resource sharing | Communication and collaboration |
| Cataloguing and indexing | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Collating | Data analysis |
| Indexing | Data analysis |
| Content analysis | Data analysis |
| Data modelling | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Desktop publishing and pre-press | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Photography | Practice-led research |
| Documentation | Strategy and project management |
| Iterative design | Strategy and project management |
| Record linkages | Data analysis |
| Risk management | Strategy and project management |
| Searching and querying | Data analysis |
| System quality assurance and code testing | Strategy and project management |
| Usability analysis | Strategy and project management |
| Interface design | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Statistical analysis | Data analysis |
| Collaborative publishing | Data publishing and dissemination |
| General website development | Data publishing and dissemination |
| General project management | Strategy and project management |
| Manual input and transcription | Data capture |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created:
Text
Software tools used:
MySQL; PHP; Adobe Acrobat; Atlas.ti; Family Historian (gedcom)
Source material used:
Sources of data for this project are complex in that the holdings are widely distributed: there are some state but mostly private archives on both sides of the channel. Because most convents were violently attacked during the French Revolution many records disappeared or were destroyed. However in some places the revolutionaries kept and recorded documents and thus they have survived. A number of convents survive to the present day with archives. A substantial number of documents were printed by the Catholic Record Society at the beginning of the twentieth century: we have re-edited these and published these versions on the website. The main documents for supplying data are Profession and Obituary Books kept by the convents recording the details of their members. Conventual Annals and Chronicles often supply additional details. Each candidate was examined before clothing and profession by the eccleiastical authorities to ensure that no undue influence had been placed on her: these often give details of parents, age and other data as well as statements about vocation.
Digital resource created:
To date (July 2010) the website and new editions of CRS documents.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| Queen Mary, University of London |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | PI Michael Questier, Research Fellow & Project manager Caroline Bowden, Katharine Keats-Rohan, Jan Broadway, James Kelly, Katrien Daemen de Gelder, Pascal Majerus |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | PhD student(s), Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Caroline Bowden |
| Title | Who Were the Nuns? |
| Record created | 2010-07-22 |
| Record updated | 2011-05-11 16:59 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/3921 |
| Citation of record | Caroline Bowden: Who Were the Nuns?. <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/3921> created: 2010-07-22, last updated 2011-05-11 16:59 |