I am currently working on the research project The Language of the Labouring Poor in Late Modern England as a student assistant. My tasks consist of transcribing the handwritten letters into a word processing tool, comparing, encoding and normalising them. This work will allow for the creation of a digital searchable corpus in order to facilitate the further study of variation within the pauper letters. I find this activity particularly interesting as reading each letter offers the opportunity to directly engage with the past. The corpus opens a window into the lives of the labouring poor in England, often tragic, sometimes funny. I find it fascinating!
Before I started this position, I studied religion and English at the University of Fribourg where I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in 2017. I then moved to the University of Lausanne to start my Master’s in Digital Humanities and English. I plan on writing my Master thesis on language variation in the Pauper letters corpus alongside working on the research project itself.