Early Modern Forum: establishing an international virtual network of scholars working on early modern studies. [NB Highlight Notice application]

The project will link Warwick's large and very strong community of early modern scholars to other centres of early modern expertise in the US and France in order to create a virtual forum for the exchange of ideas about Britain, Europe and America in the period c.1500-c.1850. The network will link the research cultures of leading universities and centres of research excellence: Warwick, Yale, Boston, Vanderbilt, Huntington Library-USC and the Sorbonne, Paris. Rather than linking particular scholars the aim is to link the research communities more generally, creating an innovative form of cross-institutional collaboration.

The project will make use of existing technologies, and in particular social networking, and apply them to the interactions associated with research in order to make the process of collaboration much easier. This could be interaction through forms of web-based video-conferencing or text-based collaboration in the form of shared documents, blogs, wikis and chats. These aids to research collaboration, it is envisaged, will become part of routine research culture though one spread out over large geographical distances, creating a new type of scholarly community. In turn, such collaborations can lead to new types of research output: alongside conventional articles we might expect podcasts, video-streamed events, and discussion pages overseen by a guest academic with a particular expertise. The project thus explores how a virtual network might transform the ways in which academic research takes place between institutions that are geographically far-flung and the types of research outputs such collaborations might produce.

The project will seek to make use of the mass of digitised resources that already exist for the early modern period and that are available at Warwick and participating institutions. Rather than seeking to add new collections of digital material, the project will add value to the wonderful material that is already available. These databases enable new questions to be asked of such material and new answers. For example, the ability to search databases for particular words or phrases opens up exciting possibilities of exploring different uses of the same word.

The network is based on existing partnerships (with Vanderbilt and Boston) but also with emerging ones (the Huntington Library-USC, Yale and the Sorbonne). The network will benefit both members of staff and postgraduates, who will thereby be able to pursue research themes and discussions with colleagues who they might otherwise only infrequently meet physically. In turn, institutions outside the UK benefit from Warwick's expertise and lively research culture.

In a sense the bid reflects the impact of the public's thirst for social networking on academia rather than the impact of academics on the public. But the project will put content back into the public domain, through the 'Brief Lives' and 'My Favourites' sections of the forum. The former are short biographies of neglected figures, inspired by the seventeenth century collection compiled by John Aubrey. Perhaps of even more interest to a wider public will be the 'My Favourites' podcasts of prominent scholars talking about their favourite primary and secondary sources. Some pilot interviews are already available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/emforum/favourites/. These will be further disseminated via ITunesU (it is worth noting that podcasts by Mark Knights about Georgian Britain are the third most popular Warwick ITunesU podcasts). Partnership with the Huntington Library at San Marino in Los Angeles will also build in some public involvement - the Library also possesses a good art collection and botanical gardens, both of which attract large numbers of visitors a year - and the Forum will try to build an open access section that can cater to this clientele, including the Brief Lives and My Favourites but also containing discussion about early modern art and botanical gardens. This might help visitors better understand and appreciate the collections they are visiting.