1. VRE for the History of Political Discourse
Dr Simon Hodson
vre.earlymoderntexts.org
vre.politicaldiscourse.org.uk

2. Outline Scholarly Developments in the History of Political Discourse
What is the scholarly and research need for VREs in the history of political discourse / early modern studies?
MA in the History of Political Discourse
Student ownership of the VRE
Enhancement of digital resources
User feedback
Early Modern VRE Research Group
Activities
Research Agenda
User experience

3. Scholarly developments in the history of political discourse…
From the history of political ideas to the history of political discourse.
Transformation of the canon; recovery of lost voices.
Concern with language and the mediation of power and contestation: the lexicon is a battleground.
Social history as history of concepts, and history of concepts as a study of discourse and languge.
Linguistic turn among historians of ideas, and a new historicism in the study of literary texts.
An erosion of boundaries between hitherto discrete approaches leads to a fertile interdisciplinarity.
And the need for collaborative research…

4. The Explosion in Digital Resources!!!
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
A host of other collections: Gallica, Biblioteca Virtuel Saavedra Fajardo.
The availability and scope of digital resources have amplified some pre-existing scholarly trends:
shattering the ‘canon’;
reception and re-reading rather than simply ‘production’;
potential of full-text resources…
What is the best way to exploit these developments?

5. What is a VRE?
Definition offered by the OST e-Infrastructure Working Group
A VRE is a set of online tools, systems and processes interoperating to facilitate or enhance the research process within and without institutional boundaries. The purpose of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is to provide researchers with the tools and services they need to do research of any type as efficiently and effectively as possible. This means VREs will help individual researchers manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in doing research. In addition they will facilitate collaboration among communities of researchers, often across disciplinary and national boundaries.
RePAH: just connect…
Connecting historians with each other, holdding out the prospect of increased collaboration between geographically dispersed researchers, or simply between historians who wish to collaboratively and cumulatively on the same data sets and resources.

6. Hull - UEA VRE Consortium
JISC VRE Project:
Three years from January 2005.
Explore the use of Access Grid and Sakai for the delivery of a jointly-taught MA programme.
British Academy Project:
Eighteen months from April 2006.
Explicitly to expand our activities to establish a ‘Virtual Research Group’.
Team:
Professors Glenn Burgess and Howell Lloyd at Hull.
Professor Colin Davis and Dr Mark Knights at UEA.
Web-developer, Paul Beckett and the servers based at UEA.
Project Manager, Simon Hodson at Hull.
MA Programme; Virtual Research Group; eTexts Forum (Pilot)

7. MA in the History of Political Discourse
Research-centred, student-led pedagogy…
Access Grid for Joint Seminars between Hull and UEA.
Sakai Collaborative Environment for resources, collaborative and communication tools.
Pilot
2006-7: Full Programme Runs
Three core modules taught (Authority and Ideology and Historiography in Semester One; Obedience and Dissent in Semester Two.
All seminars conducted using AG and VNC.
All seminars study early modern texts available electronically.
MA in the History of Political Discourse

8. MA in the History of Political Discourse
Student ownership of the VRE: discussion board and wiki
MA in the History of Political Discourse

9. MA in the History of Political Discourse
Student ownership of the VRE: Civil War Radicalism
MA in the History of Political Discourse

10. Access Grid MA Seminars with VNC
MA in the History of Political Discourse

11. Access Grid MA Seminars with VNC
MA in the History of Political Discourse

12. MA in the History of Political Discourse
User Feedback
‘An excellent forum for discussion and debate.’
‘The audio visual format … was extremely good and gave the opportunity for more academic (tutorial) input than a conventional seminar.’
‘This has been a most stimulating and fascinating module. All the teachers, in Hull and in Norwich, were amazing and very able at putting across their knowledge. One felt very privileged and lucky to have access to such an array of knowledge.’
MA in the History of Political Discourse

13. Early Modern VRE Research Group
Access Grid for a ‘Virtual’ Research Group
‘Virtual Research Group’: Different constructions of the Commonwealth and Polity
Launched at a workshop in September 2006.
22 researchers at 13 UK institutions.
Bid to AHRC to extend the project over three more years, to produce a collaboratively authored eDictionary of Early Modern Keywords and Concepts.
Monthly AG Seminars
Seven to date, started in November 2006.
Combination of full Room Nodes and Desktop Nodes.
Seminars have generally involved participants at 8-10 sites.
Full participation: up to 17 PIGs and 8 Room Nodes (UEA, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, York, Essex, Oxford).
Use of Sakai
Collaborative and communication tools.
Wiki: potential for multiple contributions, collaborative authorship and publication to the web.
Early Modern VRE Research Group

14. Virtual Research Group Seminars Early Modern VRE Research Group

15. Virtual Research Group Portal Early Modern VRE Research Group

16. Virtual Research Group Portal: Wiki Early Modern VRE Research Group

17. Early Modern VRE Research Group
VRG’s Research Agenda
Themes explored to date…
History of concepts.
Words and Concepts.
Virtues: honesty/honestas.
Commonwealth (and Republic).
Commonwealth in 1649.
Transatlantic Republicanism in the eighteenth century.
Republicanism in North America.
Res publica, chose publique and république in France.
Plebeian views of the commonwealth in the rebellions of 1549.
Early Modern VRE Research Group

18. Early Modern VRE Research Group
VRG’s Research Agenda
Potential of Collaborative Research:
Transformative impact on research through intense and sustained collaboration: the convenience of AG seminars; VRE support for fine-grained collaboration.
‘Interdisciplinarity’: historians of political thought and political discourse; social historians; lettrists… + art historians, corpus linguists…
North American, European and Antipodean collaborations.
Modalities of Collaboration?
Possessive individualism of scholarship or ‘open source research model’?
Rozenzweig, ‘Can history be open source?’, Journal of American History, 2006.
Interdisciplinary conversations?
Fine-grained collaboration, collective authorship?
Early Modern VRE Research Group

19. Early Modern VRE Research Group
Virtual Research Group Portal: Attribution
Early Modern VRE Research Group

20. Early Modern VRE Research Group
User Experience
Need to invest human resource in AG preparation and operation.
Induction and dissemination: required to create a genuine Virtual Research Community and expand the VRE beyond the easy adopters.
Adequate funding of research time.
Early Modern VRE Research Group

21. Early Modern VRE Research Group
eDictionary of Keywords in
Early Modern Political Culture
A series of collaboratively authored, online articles.
To be produced following the current model of collaboration, with sub-groups/working groups.
Collaboratively authored within the Sakai wiki, then ‘published’ to the web.
The evolution of a VRE through the development of an ongoing and sustainable Virtual Research Community.
Early Modern Texts Forum as a community VRE?
Early Modern VRE Research Group

22. Thank You - Questions? Dr Simon Hodson s.d.hodson@hull.ac.uk
vre.earlymoderntexts.org
vre.politicaldiscourse.org.uk