This project aims to explore the history of the languages of the Basque Country (French, Castilian, Basque) through the study of ego-documents. It has two main objectives: (i) to establish a large corpus of ego-documents from the Basque linguistic area from Bilbao to Bayonne and covering the period 1680-1780; (ii) to provide an analysis of the ego-documents (French, Castilian, Basque) through the prism of the history of writing and historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. The research axes structuring the project are as follows: (i) the distribution of communicative and writing functions between French and Basque, and Castilian and Basque; (ii) the writing process in Basque, French and Castilian; (iii) the use and circulation of these ego-documents in their archival and institutional context as legal evidence, procedural documents or information tools; The working hypotheses are as follows: (i) the development of "an ordinary practice of writing" in eighteenth-century France (Roche 1985) also benefited the Basque language at a time when it was still spoken across different social classes. In the Spanish Basque Country, where the elite abandoned the use of Basque in the 18th century, ordinary Basque writing is less developed; (ii) the Basque language employed in these letters varies according to the profile of the writer, his geographical origin, his social background and his experience with Basque writing; (iii) the local French language spoken in Basque-speaking areas is clearly influenced by the Basque language, whatever the social background of the speakers; (iv) The Castilian used in these ego-documents has particular features attributable to its contact with Basque. This is most evident in the texts of less literate writers from lower ranks.

The Digital Encyclopaedia of European Sociability (DIGITENS) project will produce the first open-access digital encyclopaedia and anthology of sociability in Europe throughout the long-eighteenth century. The purpose of the DIGITENS project is to build an original framework for understanding the interactions, tensions, limits and paradoxes underlying European models of sociability and to reflect on the following question: Can the emergence and formation of European models of sociability be traced throughout the long eighteenth century (1650-1850)? Drawing upon the expertise of international members from different disciplines and national traditions, the project will create a toplevel interdisciplinary network and facilitate intersectoral communication between its academic and non-academic partners. The nine international universities will work together with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musée Cognacq-Jay in France, and The National Archives in Great Britain, allowing members to explore how understandings of sociability might be enhanced through dialogue, international collaboration, and digital technology, developing a broader contextualisation of the research into European sociability. As the first digital encyclopaedia of its kind, the expected impact of the resource will not only benefit researchers, but anyone interested in the history of European models of sociability. The project is not, however, of purely historical or academic interest. Through the implementation of outreach events, workshops and the production of the accessible digital platforms, the DIGITENS team will promote a wide investigation of the value of eighteenth century principles in twenty-first-century private and public lives throughout Europe. The interdisciplinary and international aspects of the DIGITENS project, and coherent methodology, are innovative, and the scope broad and ambitious.

In recent years we have all become familiar with the notion of information overload, the digital deluge, the information explosion, and numerous variations on this idea. At the heart of this phenomenon is the growth of born-digital big data, a term which encompasses everything from aggregated tweets and Facebook posts to government emails, from the live and archived web to data generated by wearable and household technology. While there has been a growing interest in big data and the humanities in recent years, as exhibited notably in the AHRC's digital transformations theme, most academic research in this area has been undertaken by computer scientists and in emerging fields such as social informatics. As yet, there has been no systematic investigation of how humanities researchers are engaging with this new type of primary source, of what tools and methods they might require in order to work more effectively with big data in the future, and of what might constitute a specifically humanities approach to big data research. What kinds of questions will this data allow us to ask and answer? How can we ensure that this material is collected and preserved in such a way that it meets the requirements of humanities researchers? What insights can scholars in the humanities learn from ground-breaking work in the computer and social sciences, and from the archives and libraries who are concerned with securing all of this information? The proposed research Network will bring together researchers and practitioners from all of these stakeholder groups, to discern if there is a genuine humanities approach to born-digital big data, and to establish how this might inform, complement and draw on other disciplines and practices. Over the course of three workshops, one to be held at The National Archives in Kew, one at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and one at the University of Cambridge, the Network will address the current state of the field; establish the most appropriate tools and methods for humanities researchers for whom born-digital material is an important primary source; discuss the ways in which researchers and archives can work together to facilitate big data research; identify the barriers to engagement with big data, particularly in relation to skills; and work to build an engaged and lasting community of interest. The focus of the Network will be on history, but it will also encompass other humanities and social science disciplines. It will also include representatives of non-humanities disciplines, for example the computer, social and information sciences. Cross-disciplinary approaches and collaborative working are essential in such a new and complex area of investigation, and the Network relates to the current highlight notice encouraging the exploration of innovative areas of cross-disciplinary enquiry. While there has for some time been a recognition of the value of greater engagement between researchers in the humanities and the sciences in the development of new approaches to and understandings of born-digital big data, only very tentative first steps have been made towards realising this aim (for example forthcoming activity organised by the Turing Institute). The Network will provide a forum from which to launch precisely this kind of cross-disciplinary discussion, defining a central role for the humanities. During the 12 months of the project all members of the Network will contribute to a web resource, which will present key themes and ideas to both an academic and wider audience of the interested general public. External experts from government, the media and other relevant sectors will also be invited to contribute, to ensure that the Network takes account of a range of opinions and needs. The exchange of knowledge and experience that takes place at the workshops will also be distilled into a white paper, which will be published under a CC-BY licence in month 12 of the Network.

This fellowship will pioneer interdisciplinary understanding of the impact of digital change on the cultural memory practices and the 'official' record of the British Army's unit operational reports ('war diaries') through comparative research over two archival sites: the Ministry of Defence, Whitehall and The National Archives (TNA). Military units document and record their activities in theatre (active combat) by keeping war diaries. War diaries are official records that (i) capture information to be used at a later time by the military to improve training and tactics, and (ii) establish a comprehensive record of a unit's activities to enable future historical research. The CMU's key work includes: improving operational record keeping (i.e. collecting, organising, and archiving active war diaries); developing and maintaining briefing documents to support current operations; working with treasury solicitors and others in compensation claims, and providing documents for public inquiries. TNA is the UK government's official archive. It contains over 1,000 years of history. Staff at the National Archives give detailed guidance to government departments and the public sector on information management and advise others about the care of historical archives. This work pioneers a a cultural memory studies' approach which sees memory as cultural and social practices which orient persons to possible versions of the past in such a way as to make them relevant to ongoing personal, institutional and political concerns. This approach will be applied to the first ever ethnography of the British Army's Corporate Memory Unit (CMU) in the MOD, Whitehall, London after securing unprecedented access. This crucially enables the project to uniquely interrogate the connections and disconnections across and between the often publicly accessible features of the new war ecology (public archives, TNA) and the relatively hidden military organizational knowledge production and management (MOD). This fellowship will examine how the advent of highly mobile digital images and recordings from the frontline presents an unprecedented challenge to the organizational memory of the Army constructed in the context of over a century of maintaining unit war diaries, and what this transformation could mean for changes in the forms of knowledge about war, for the military, archivists, historians and publics. The impetus for this fellowship is the 21st century Western-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being embedded in the 'connective turn' (Hoskins 2010, 2011). This is the massively increased scale, volume and complexity of digital/digitized information that shape a new knowledge base - an 'information infrastructure ' (Bowker and Star 2000) through which wars are planned, fought, historicised, and (de)legitimised. In this period, Government electronic record keeping systems have eclipsed previous paper-based systems, which 'has been accompanied both by a marked deterioration in record keeping practices and the use of record keeping to enable an audit culture' (Moss 2012: 860). Specifically, the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars mark the evolution of the MOD organizational memory system from paper to digital. Although the organization was using computers in 2001, it was still operating a paper system, i.e. printing out work and placing in paper files. This compares with the 300 million digital files from operations in Iraq it has to manage today.

This project will address an existing gap to support researchers and practitioners communities working with complex 3D data, including data related to material and digital cultures, to enhance the national data services for arts and humanities. This existing gap is rapidly growing as digitisation hardware and tools become more accessible for arts and humanities researchers to use within the research process. Examples of data include 3-dimensional (3D) data resulting from born-digital materials and systems (i.e. Virtual Reality environments), as well as processes such as 3D modelling, structure from motion, (also known as photogrammetry), 3D scanning. It also includes other imagery resulting from non-invasive digital imaging such as computerised tomography (CT), multi and hyperspectral imagery, pigment analysis, and optical microscopy. As such, there is an urgent need to provide community-led services, as opposed to private industry tools, for researchers to use. The research will use a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to investigate and address the needs of current and future researchers. Hence, the project will be community-led with interdisciplinary academics and practitioners leading the various activities. Institutions involved include the University of Brighton, Kings College London, University College London, University of the West of England, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Dundee, Duke University (US), The National Archives, Historic Environment Scotland, British Library, Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum, and the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)-3D community. Five activities will be co-developed by this team including establishing user requirements, evaluating existing solutions, in particular the MorphoSource 3D repository, financial planning, developing of the specification as well as communicating and disseminating with stakeholders the various projects activities and outputs. The outcome of the research will be a published fully costed specification for design and develop an innovative interoperable Trusted Data Repository and Service (TDRS) that will provide enhanced capabilities for research using complex 3D data and for putting research outputs into practice within various sectors, including the GLAM and creative industries. The project will also identify skills and capacity building required by the community.