Uncovering digital history in Tasmania: The Digital Panopticon

We are delighted to have a guest post by Lauren Vogel of The Prosecution Project reporting on their experience of the Penal History in a Digital Age conference in June 2016.
Perhaps nothing illustrates the intersection between the past and the present more aptly than digital history. Advances in digital technology and new media hold the potential to transform the way […]

PhD Work in Progress: The Prosecution of Fraud in the Metropolis, 1760-1820

My PhD research focuses on the prosecution of fraud at the Old Bailey from 1760 to 1820. Having previously worked for a number of prosecuting agencies, including the Serious Fraud Office, I became well-acquainted with the great number of difficulties that prosecuting fraud poses in the 21st century. My interest in 18th and 19th century fraud is therefore derived from […]

Digital Panopticon @ Digital Humanities Congress

The project team will be out in force at this year’s Digital Humanities Congress in Sheffield, part of an excellent programme of papers including text analytics from our neighbours at Linguistc DNA  and the Early Modern Intoxicants project, as well as a panel from another AHRC DIgital Transformations project, Transforming Musicology.
Keynote speakers: Professor Marilyn Deegan (King’s College London), Dr Stephen Gregg (Bath Spa University) and Dr Matthew […]

19 Aug 2016

Financial Crime Conference, London, 2 September

We’re delighted to be involved with Financial Crime Symposium: past lessons, contemporary challenges, and future solutions which is being held at the London campus of the University of Liverpool on 2 September – registration is now open!
Fee is just £10 for students; the programme covers topics from the 18th century onwards and looks very appetising: financial_crime_programme_july_2016

19 Aug 2016

PhD Work in Progress: Policing and the Identification of Offenders in Metropolitan London, 1780-1850

My PhD research explores changing policing strategies, and how these affected who was arrested, and why. The period between 1780 and 1850 witnessed extensive changes to the English criminal justice system, and London was at the forefront. The Metropolitan Police force was established in 1829, and is viewed by many as the first recognisably ‘modern’ police force. However, the older […]

Conference Notice: Juvenile Justice in Europe: Past, Present and Future

Juvenile Justice in Europe: Past, Present and Future
University of Liverpool, 26-27 May 2016
The conference/symposium is being organized and hosted by the International Criminological Research Unit (ICRU) at the University of Liverpool in association with the British Society of Criminology (Youth Criminology/Youth Justice Network – BSC YC/YJN) and the European Society of Criminology (Thematic Working Group on Juvenile Justice – ESC TWGJJ).
It will address a range of pressing questions relating […]

Building Bentham’s Panopticon

This post describes a project that myself and a colleague from the Architecture department at the University of Liverpool, Dr Nick Webb, are currently working on–Building Bentham’s Panopticon– which is creating a 3D model of the Panopticon prison viewed through virtual reality software, Oculus Rift.
 1787PANOPTICON
Bentham’s Panopticon was imagined as the […]

Lost in Transportation: William Prudence and Robert Armstrong

The Digital Panopticon is a phenomenal tool but its success is ultimately dependent on the quality of past record-keeping. The eighteenth and nineteenth century data on which the project is based is outstanding in its detail and range, but it does contain some holes. Occasionally, individual convicts can fall through these. Here are a couple of examples of convicts who, in different ways, […]