Information Extraction and Entity Linkage in Historical Crime Records

Applications are invited for the above EPSRC project studentship commencing on 1 October 2019. This project will develop and refine information extraction techniques by working with one of the most intractable, largely unstructured, sources in the humanities, historical newspapers. Addressing a challenge identified during the recently completed project, the Digital Panopticon: Tracing London Convicts in Britain & Australia, 1780-1925, this project will develop methods of extracting information about crimes and police court trials from English newspapers for linkage to the existing ’life archives’ of convicts in the Digital Panopticon.

This is an interdisciplinary project which requires both humanities and computer science perspectives on data analysis. Applicants from a humanities or engineering background are welcome. They should either have a background in computer science together with an interest in the humanities, or background in a humanities discipline together with numeracy skills and an aptitude for programming.

Application deadline: 5pm, Thursday 31 January 2019

Supervisory team: Professor Bob Shoemaker (Department of History), Professor Rob Gaizauskas (Department of Computer Science)

Postgraduate study at Sheffield.

At the University of Sheffield, you will be supervised by world class academics who have published widely and are at the forefront of their fields. The History Department, ranked third among History Departments in the UK in REF2014, has a thriving research culture and postgraduate community. Our postgraduate students run their own forum and discussion groups as well as engaging with relevant research centres such as the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies. The Department of Computer Science (DCS) was ranked 5th of 89 Computer Science departments in in REF2014. The Natural Language Processing Research Group within DCS is one of the largest and most successful language processing groups in the UK/EU and information extraction is one of the group’s key areas of expertise. The group comprises approximately 50 academic, postdoctoral and PhD researchers and has a strong track record of external research grant capture, publication in top outlets in the field, and successful PhD student completion.

You will also join a growing body of researchers at our Digital Humanities Institute, one of the UK’s leading Digital Humanities centres.

More information about this studentship including information on eligibility and how to apply is available on our website here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/study/phd/funding/information-extraction.

If you have any academic enquiries about the project please contact Professor Bob Shoemaker ([Email Address Removed]) or Professor Rob Gaizauskas ([Email Address Removed]). Any questions about the application process should be directed to Beky Hasnip ([Email Address Removed]@sheffield.ac.uk).

Useful links:
History homepage: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history
Computer Sciences homepage: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/dcs
Digital Humanities Institute: https://www.dhi.ac.uk/
Natural Languages Processing Research Group: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/dcs/research/groups/nlp
Research culture: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/study/postgraduate/researchculture
Postgraduate community: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/study/postgraduate/community