The Quill Project Conventions Podcast

In this episode, Grace talks to Dr Jim Ambuske, digital historian in residence at the Washington Library in Mount Vernon, Virginia, about his extensive work in digital legal history. Legal history is a daunting topic for many scholars, especially if they lack formal training in the law. But legal treatises, court records, and other remnants of historical legal systems can offer a broad and deep well of source material to the enterprising researcher. A constellation of digital humanities projects – the Quill Project among them – are attempting to make these sources more easily accessible, and to help historians explore the full range of insights that these records can offer. In this episode, Grace talks to Dr Jim Ambuske, digital historian in residence at the Washington Library in Mount Vernon, Virginia, about his extensive work in digital legal history.

Grace Mallon talks to Paul Fisher, a practising barrister and academic lawyer, about his research into constitutional law in post-Soviet non-democracies. Constitutionalism is something we often associate with limited government and the protection of the rights of citizens. But democracies aren’t the only governments with constitutions. Since the Age of Revolutions, many of the world’s most repressive regimes have drafted and promulgated constitutions that claim to protect the rights of the people, preserve the separation of powers, and minimise the reach of the executive branch. In this episode Grace talks to Paul Fisher, a practising barrister and academic lawyer, about his research into constitutional law in post-Soviet non-democracies. Paul’s research is funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Studentship offered through the UCL, Bloomsbury and East London ("UBEL") ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership.

The Quill Project Conventions Podcast Grace Mallon talks to Denise Burgher and Jim Casey about the Colored Conventions Project, a digital project reconstructing the history of the Colored Conventions movement of the nineteenth century, and about Douglass Day, their annual community history event in honour of the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass on Valentine's Day

Grace Mallon talks to Kiana McAllister and Erica Croft about the work they're doing on the Reconstruction Amendments with Quill, and what this original research can tell us about these brief, but transformative items of American Constitutional law.

Grace Mallon and Nicholas Cole talk to Robinson Woodward-Burns about his new book 'Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilise American Politics.'

Grace Mallon and Nicholas Cole talk to Robert Saunders about what makes Britain's constitution unique and what challenges it faces in a turbulent period for UK politics and government.

Grace Mallon and Nicholas Cole discuss how a historian learns to code, where the idea of a Constitutional Convention came from, and what's next for the Quill Project.