We are excited to announce the possibility of a funded doctoral scholarship to work with the I.Sicily data/project on the epigraphic culture of Sicily and the impact of digital publication. This forms one part of a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Centre on the theme of Publication beyond Print.

Catania Museo Civico inv.354=ISic000297; cover of Gualtherus 1624; XML for ISic0297

The Leverhulme Doctoral Centre will challenge the dominance of the printed word in the study of human culture and society, by examining other media used before, alongside and after print. It will question the assumptions that self-expression, political community and intellectual progress are best served by printing. To do so, it will range across both historical media (some still in use), such as inscriptions and handwriting, and new digital media. In this way, it will ask how past methods of publication without print help us to understand future ones, and how emerging technology helps us to think about cultural history. It will bring students of communication into dialogue across differences of time, language, discipline and technology, from the humanities to social sciences.

For admission from October 2018, ten topics are offered for study. Of those ten, five will be funded this year, depending on the applications received. One of those topics will exploit the I.Sicily corpus to develop a post-print study and publication of the pre-print epigraphic culture of the island of Sicily (full advert in pdf here). I.Sicily is a digital (EpiDoc) corpus under continuous development, based in the Faculty of Classics, with a track record of combining digital innovation with collaborative research and local dissemination projects (browse around this site for more!); additionally, the PI is editing in parallel the new edition of the Sicily volume of the definitive paper corpus of the Berlin Academy, Inscriptiones Graecae XIV.1². Sicily offers unique opportunities for analysis of a regional epigraphic culture over more than a thousand years – the island is a richly multilingual and multicultural region at the heart of the ancient Mediterranean; I.Sicily offers a rich digital dataset with possibilities for further development – the ideal basis for such an innovative approach. The project will offer extensive opportunities to engage with the Leverhulme Doctoral Centre ‘Publication beyond print’, with reference both to the ancient pre-print publication world and to the challenges and possibilities of the post-print world of the digital humanities.

The deadline for applications is noon on 9 March 2018. For more information on how to apply, see the doctoral centre webpage. Please get in touch with jonathan.prag(at)merton.ox.ac.uk directly if you have any questions!