News and events that are happening in the Quill Project.


Quill Project News

Archiving Conflict and Reconciliation

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Negotiated Texts Seminar on Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties

Negotiated Texts Seminar

Wednesday 28 February 2018, 1.30pm, Harold Lee Room, Pembroke College

Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and Some Problems of Treaty Interpretation

On 28 February, the Negotiated Texts Network gained insight into working with negotiated texts in the context of public international law. As part of the network’s mandate, Matthew Windsor, a Junior Research Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford, was invited to moderate a...

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Documentary editor Annabel Harris visits Bowdoin College to explore George Mitchell's papers

Academics from England and Ireland visited the Bowdoin campus recently to study the papers of Senator George Mitchell ’54, H'83, in particular his role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland twenty-five years ago.

Harris is a documentary editor with Quill, a digital humanities project based at Pembroke College that models formal negotiations, scanning and posting a range of documents that relate to a variety of constitutional and legislative milestones. The aim is to enable users to...

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Constitutional Conversations with Dr Nicholas Cole

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Quill Project wins NEH Grant

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Presenting the Records of Historical Decision Making

The most recent Negotiated Texts Network workshop took place in Pembroke College on Wednesday 27 February. Thanks to additional funding from a Knowledge Exchange grant, the network was able to benefit from the presence of a number of US participants.

  1. Speakers and projects

Neal Millikan, Adams Papers Editorial Project

Michael Pidd, The Digital Humanities Institute

Alexander von Lünen, [Hansard at...

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Quill Project and UVU Launch Ground-breaking Model of the 1895 Utah State Constitutional Convention

On 11 April at the UVU campus in Orem, Quill, alongside its strategic partner at UVU, the Center for Constitutional Studies (CCS), will launch its model of the 1895 Utah State Constitutional Convention. Dr Nicholas Cole, Director of the Quill Project, will speak at the event which will highlight the project’s contribution to the study of constitutionalism.

For the last year and a half, under the oversight of Quill, CCS students have worked with digital records from the Utah State...

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Quill's French Venture

As part of our summer internship scheme in 2018, Quill partnered with the Maison française d’Oxford to host three French interns, Lucie Saëz and Laurine Le Rolland-Raumer from the University of Rennes 2, and Gauthier Boucly from Paris I. The aim of the partnership was to carry out some preliminary work on the records of the French Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution in order to explore the practicability of a larger scale project. Using tools created for the 1787 project and...

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Using Digital Tools to Understand Policy Making

Was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights merely an imperialistic ploy? Who was responsible for enshrining gender equality in the Charter of the United Nations, the first international instrument to recognize women’s rights? In what ways did Indian constitution-makers seek to balance democratic principles against a need for technical competence? These are just three examples of research questions raised at the Negotiated Texts Network seminar on...

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Quill Abroad, Part II

Later this month, Dr Cole, Quill Project head and founder, will be heading to the United States for the second time this year to conduct research, collaborate with partner organization, UVU, and assist with fundraising efforts for Quill’s future projects. This trip will build on Dr Cole’s successful trip to the United States and Utah State Capitol for a tour in February, at which time was unveiled the transatlantic partnership between Utah Valley University and the Quill Project. In March, Dr Cole’s travels will take him from Philadelphia, where he will be speaking at an event at the National Constitution Center to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Virginia, where he was also a research fellow for the summer of 2008. The trip ends in Boston, Massachusetts, where Dr Cole will be visiting with other constitutional scholars and conducting further research regarding the Constitutional Convention.

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Women and Constitutions on 2018 International Women’s Day/Negotiated Text Network Launch Anniversary

Today, March 8, 2018, marks the one-year anniversary of the Negotiated Text Network and is also International Women’s Day. Given the network’s emphasis on formal processes of negotiation, today provides an excellent opportunity to pay attention to those voices that have been heard or ignored within negotiations of constitutions throughout history.

As is evident in the model of negotiations underpinning the 1787 US Constitutional Convention, the United States Constitution was conceived...

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Library of Congress uploads high-resolution, full-colour images of Madison's Notes

The Library of Congress has made publicly available new, full-colour images of Madion's Notes on their digital collections website. Quill has updated our platform with links to the new images both within the model of the 1787 Constitutional Convention and as additional resources in our library under "Library of Congress links to Madison's Notes (new images)." All who are interested in these primary sources stand to benefit from looking anew at the recently published images which show immense details from pen strokes to the filaments of the paper to the additional notes appended by later commentators, as evident in the side-by-side of the images above.

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"Making Sense of Negotiated Text at Scale" Workshop

On November 30, 2017, the Quill Project participated in a workshop convened by the Centre for Digital Scholarship and TORCH Negotiated Text Network on “Making sense of negotiated text at scale.” Dr Alfie Abdul-Rahman presented alongside Drs Félix Krawatzek, David Price, Radoslaw Zubek, [David...

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Reflections on my Micro-Internship: Eileen Jakeway

Given the limitations on what can potentially be accomplished within a “micro” internship, all parties involved with what began as my one-week stint working with the Quill Project were positively surprised by how fruitful this experience turned out to be. On my end, being exposed to the inner workings of what, for now, can be termed a digital humanities project (I’ll return to this later) not only boosted my professional development and enhanced my knowledge of constitutional history, data...

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OxTALENT Awards 2017: Data Visualisation

We are thrilled to announce that the Quill Project was awarded runner up in the ‘Data Visualisation’ category in this year’s OxTALENT awards for ‘Modelling and Visualising the Creation of the American Constitution’. OxTALENT awards recognise members of the University who have made innovative use of digital technology in order to foster learning and academic practice at either undergraduate or postgraduate level; developed more effective links between teaching and research, or improved impact...

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Negotiated Texts Seminar

Negotiated Texts Network Seminar, Monday 8th May

Since the launch of The Oxford Research Centre in Humanities’ (TORCH) Negotiated Texts Network in Pembroke College on International Women’s Day 2017, The Quill project have committed to putting on several termly events exploring different facets of negotiated texts and digital humanities. The first event of Trinity term took place on Monday, May 8th, with a seminar that...

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Negotiated Text Network Launch

On International Women’s Day 2017, The Quill Project hosted the launch of The Oxford Research Centre in Humanities’ (TORCH) Negotiated Texts Network in Pembroke College. The event brought together students and researchers from across the University to enjoy talks on textual negotiations, and, importantly, a selection of fine cakes! The stimulating talks given by [Dr Rob...

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OxTALENT Awards 2017: Data Visualisation

We are thrilled to announce that the Quill Project was awarded runner up in the ‘Data Visualisation’ category in this year’s OxTALENT awards for ‘Modelling and Visualising the Creation of the American Constitution’. OxTALENT awards recognise members of the University who have made innovative use of digital technology in order to foster learning and academic practice at either undergraduate or postgraduate level; developed more effective links between teaching and research, or improved impact...

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Negotiated Texts Network Seminar (TORCH), June 2017

On June 29th the Quill Project hosted their second The Oxford Research Centre in Humanities’ (TORCH) Negotiated Texts Network seminar at Pembroke College, Oxford. The event brought together interested researchers from different departments and disciplines to listen to our two guest speakers, and to discuss the possibility of future collaboration. The invited speakers, [Dr Louise...

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