Kindred Britain

Description

This Skype meeting with Nicholas Jenkins, creator of 'Kindred Britain', will offer participants an opportunity to reflect on the project and to consider the potential of digital work to transform our understanding of histories and cultures. Organised by the Digital Humanities Network and the Centre for Material Texts.

Kindred Britain is a network of nearly 30,000 individuals — many of them iconic figures in British culture — connected through family relationships of blood, marriage, or affiliation. It is a vision of the nation’s history as a giant family affair. For example, see how Jane Austen was related to Virginia Woolf or Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde.

Launched last summer and called an “amazing digital humanities website” by The Economist, Kindred Britain was shortlisted for the Kantar Information Is Beautiful Awards 2013 and was a runner up in the “Best DH Visualization or Infographic” category in the Digital Humanities Awards 2013. It was also featured as one of five humanities “Research Highlights” of 2013 in the Stanford Annual Report.

Nicholas Jenkins is associate professor of English at Stanford University, specializing in the study of modern and contemporary poetry.

Participation in the seminar is free but spaces are limited. If you would like to come, please register in advance by clicking on the online registration link on this page. Participants are asked to spend some time exploring the 'Kindred Britain' site in preparation for seminar discussion. You should consult Jenkins’s online essay “Originating Kindred Britain”.