Genealogies of Knowledge is an interdisciplinary project and associated Research Network that brings together scholars of translation studies, classics, Islamic philosophy, Greek medicine and digital culture, in addition to specialists in software development and data visualization. The project develops resources and methodologies that support research into the role of translation and other forms of mediation in negotiating the meanings of key political and scientific concepts throughout history, and has created a unique set of electronic corpora in several languages and a range of innovative software tools with which to interrogate them. Both the corpora and the software are freely accessible to the research community, and the design of the project is readily adaptable to different language combinations and historical settings.

This workshop will offer hands on experience of working with the software tools and the Modern and Internet English corpora created by the project. After a brief overview of the project and the design of the corpora, we will demonstrate the usefulness of the various visualization tools available through our freely accessible software interface and coach attendees in using them to interact with the corpora in meaningful ways. The workshop is designed to help inspire, influence and support future research in the digital humanities, and to suggest possible extensions of the Genealogies project to other linguistic trajectories, to different historical moments, and/or to different constellations of concepts than those currently being examined by the Genealogies team.

This workshop will be interactive, involving a series of guided practical tasks. If you intend to bring your laptop to the workshop, make sure you download the GoK tool beforehand at http://genealogiesofknowledge.net/software/. If the download is successful you will be able to run a file titled gok.jnlp, which should open a window that looks like this:

For further information on the Genealogies of Knowledge project, visit: www.genealogiesofknowledge.net.

Information on the Genealogies Research Network is available here: https://genealogiesofknowledge.net/research-network/

Jan Buts is a postdoctoral researcher attached to the QuantiQual project at Trinity College Dublin, and co-coordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge research network. He works at the intersection of conceptual history, translation theory and corpus linguistics.

Henry Jones is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies. His current research interests include corpus-based translation studies, the reception of classical Greek authors in nineteenth-century Britain and retranslation theory. Having joined the Genealogies of Knowledge project in April 2017, he has been closely involved in the construction of the Genealogies of Knowledge Modern English corpus as a resource for scholars interested in the role of translation and other sites of mediation in the historical evolution and contestation of political and scientific discourse. With colleagues Mona Baker and Jan Buts, he co-ordinates the Genealogies of Knowledge research network.