Category: Research

Australia, Canada, Research

Hands Across the Sea: Irish and Scottish Battalions in the AIF and CEF

Originally posted on the Four Nations History Network Blog on 8 February 2016. In December 1915, Reverend J.S. MacPherson of Morphett Vale, South Australia, wrote to the State War Council proposing to raise battalions for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) “representing the National Societies, such as the Caledonian, Hibernian, Welsh and Cornish.”[1] A little over one year into the First World War, voluntary enlistments were tapering off … Continue reading Hands Across the Sea: Irish and Scottish Battalions in the AIF and CEF

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Digital History, Research

Hashtag Commemoration

It’s been fun to observe the centenary of the First World War through twitter and other social media. These forms of communication allow people to experience and share commemorative events in new ways. Attendees at ceremonies can broadcast their thoughts, perspectives, and reactions and people unable to attend the ceremonies in person can use social media to participate from the other side of the world. Tapping … Continue reading Hashtag Commemoration

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Canada, Digital History, Research, Workshops and Tutorials

Mapping Patriotism (sort of)

I’m prepping some GIS workshops, so I needed some data that workshop participants could map as part of an exercise. I could just make up some random numbers but it would be much more effective to demonstrate the power of GIS if I used some actual data that could reveal how space and place should factor into historical analysis. The problem is that I haven’t … Continue reading Mapping Patriotism (sort of)

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Canada, Research

Loggers, not Fighters

As part of Black History Month, Canada Post issued a new stamp to commemorate No 2. Construction Battalion. The battalion was formed as an all-Black labour unit of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) in 1916 to address the persistent exclusion of African Canadian volunteers by Canadian recruiting officers. The No. 2 Construction Battalion is often celebrated as a stepping-stone toward racial equality in Canada because … Continue reading Loggers, not Fighters

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Canada, Digital History, Research

Getting into Gephi

I don’t think this counts as a New Year’s resolution, but I’ve been meaning to play around with Gephi for a while now. The biggest hurdle for me was finding sources that were conducive to network analysis. My research does not rely heavily on personal correspondence, so I turned to the Canadian Letters and Images Project, based at Vancouver Island University. The project has build a corpus of … Continue reading Getting into Gephi

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Australia, Research

Trawling Trove

As some of my earlier posts suggest, I often supplement my archival research by drawing on repositories of digitized newspapers. The National Library of Australia’s Trove database is easily one of the largest, most innovative, and best-curated public repositories for digitized newspapers. I have finally gotten around to using the Trove API  to scrape a large corpus of newspaper articles. The API (Application Programming Interface) allows users to … Continue reading Trawling Trove

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Australia, New Zealand, Research

Throwback Thursday

[Originally posted in October 2013 as “Through Space AND Time”] I’m just using Thursday as an excuse to repost these images from my defunct blog. I took these pictures during my research trips to Australian and New Zealand during the summer of 2013. Taking my inspiration from the 2012 NiCHE summer photo contest, it had become a sort-of hobby to compose these photos while away on research. … Continue reading Throwback Thursday

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Canada, Digital History, Research

Playing with Fusion

At the moment, I’m writing a chapter on voluntary contributions from Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand during the First World War. Any discussion of First Nations enlistments in Canada is bound to include a discussion of the 114th (Brock’s Rangers) Battalion, raised in Haldiman County in Southwestern Ontario. The 114th included two companies of First Nations soldiers, recruited mainly from the Six … Continue reading Playing with Fusion

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Canada, Digital History, Research

Canadianagram

This post combines one of my earlier posts on Google Books’ Ngram Viewer and my bash script that built a search engine for the Early Canadiana Online database. Google Books probably has the best-known Ngram Viewer, but Tim Sherratt has produced a similar ap called QueryPic to search the Trove and Papers Past newspaper databases and graph the number of articles containing a keyword. The advantage … Continue reading Canadianagram

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Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Research

Imagining War and Peace in the Empire

Originally Posted 8 November 2012 I’ve been struggling to figure out a way to incorporate more of my research into this blog, and with November 11th coming up I think I’ve found a way. While this doesn’t actually have much to do with my actual dissertation, I’ve combed through some of the digitized archival databases in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to assemble some photographs … Continue reading Imagining War and Peace in the Empire

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