University College London

Department Member, Bentham Project

Other Affiliations: King's College London, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies

About

Since October 2010 I have worked as a Research Associate at University College London's Bentham Project, where I have responsibility for the pioneering and award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, Transcribe Bentham (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham). Aside from this, I have worked on the JISC-funded EPICURE e-publishing project in association with UCL Library Services, am currently helping to annotate a forthcoming volume of 'The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham', and serve as Editor of the 'Journal of Bentham Studies' (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/journals/journal_of_bentham_studies). On 7 March 2012, I will give one of that year's four Bentham Seminars.

Transcribe Bentham was honoured with an Award of Distinction and €5,000 in the 'Digital Communities' category of the 2011 Prix Ars Electronica (http://www.aec.at/prix/en/gewinner/2011/), the world's foremost digital arts competition. This award constitutes joint second place in a field of over 400, and was the same prize which was bestowed upon Wikileaks in 2007. I was fortunate enough to attend the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, and gave a talk at the 'Digital Communities' winners forum (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvD3ipgZCTQ&feature=player_embedded). The project has since been nominated for the 2011 Digital Heritage Award.

With the support of an Arts and Humanities Research Council doctoral award, I studied for my doctorate at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College London, from 2006 to 2010. I also hold an undergraduate MA (2000 to 2004) and a Master of Letters degree (2004 to 2006), both from the University of Aberdeen.

My primary research interests are in the history of convict transportation, and my doctoral thesis, entitled '"Only a Place fit for Angels and Eagles': the Norfolk Island penal settlement, 1825-1855', focused upon this notorious penal station. Generally caricatured as a 'hell-on-earth', the historiography is dominated by the Norfolk Island 'legend', a convenient if misleading and sensationalised short-hand utilised to superficially describe the character of the convicts and the regime they experienced. This legend emerged from an over-use of several under-contextualised sources, an often too credulous reading of narratives of convicts and visitors, and tacit acceptance of nineteenth century discourses of crime and morality.

To examine the reality of Norfolk Island and the convicts detained there, I created a database of 6,458 male convicts - the single largest study of penal station prisoners - by which to examine their lives before, during, and after Norfolk Island. The study encompasses topics such as the reasons for which convicts were sent to the Island, the penal stations power structure and administration, convict life and resistance, sex, and punishment, including a month-by-month breakdown of sentences to flogging, hard labour in irons, and solitary confinement from 1833 to 1855. In July 2010, I gave a keynote address on this research to the Professional Historians Association's (NSW) 25th anniversary conference at Norfolk Island.

Aside from this, I have also written on political transportees and have a number of other interests in the field. I act as Postgraduate Representative on the British Australian Studies Association's Executive, and am an Associate Editor of the BASA journal, 'Australian Studies' (http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/australian-studies).

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