08/14/2008

Abigail Firey's "Carolingian Canon Law Project" Receives $49,000 Grant

History professor Abigail Firey has received a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant for more than $49,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant will support Firey’s “Carolingian Canon Law Project.”

The project is producing a searchable, electronic rendition of major works of Carolingian canon law, in a presentation that shows their relation to other works of canon law used by Carolingian jurists. In addition to clarifying the textual history of medieval canon law, the project will provide historical and bibliographic annotation of several hundred canons used by jurists before, during, and after the Carolingian period.

“There are many strong digital humanities projects being developed in the College, by researchers in Hispanic Studies, Russian and Eastern Studies, Linguistics, and Classics, as well as History, so I imagine that this will be but one of many such grants we see coming to UK, “ Firey said. “Like this project, theirs are international and collaborative in orientation, and it is fun to see the University of Kentucky gaining recognition abroad and encouraging partnerships with fine scholars elsewhere.” 

“We have had terrific support from Research in Computing for the Humanities, especially under the leadership of Ross Scaife, and from the VisCenter, and we could not have obtained this award without the generosity and assistance of the people there. Needless to say, we are very, very excited to have this opportunity to move the project forward."