Dr Ruth Ahnert, ‘Tudor Networks of Power’
Monday 17 October 2016
ArtsTwo 3.20 – 5-6pm
This paper will discuss the collaborative project, Tudor Networks of Power, which seeks to reconstruct the evidence for Tudor government networks that survive in the state papers archive (now digitized at State Papers Online). By analyzing the metadata from these 132,000 letters, we are able both to map the social network implicated in this correspondence, and to measure the relative centrality of each of its members using a range of mathematical tools. These measures enable us to trace large-scale patterns and anomalies, and to identify significant people and bodies of letters within the network requiring closer analysis. This paper will discuss both the process behind this large-scale project, and our initial findings.
Ruth Ahnert is Senior Lecture in the School of English and Drama, and a member of the DIN Steering Committee.