The Voltaire Lab
The Voltaire Lab, now in its fifth year of existence,
continues to be a hub of research activity centred
around Voltaire’s digital corpora and, more generally,
the interface of digital humanities methods and
collections with 18th-century studies. Thanks to the
generous support of the Astra Foundation, we were
able to continue our main research and development
efforts for 2022/23, including the Voltaire Library
Database, whose data entry is largely completed, and
the Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to Voltaire, a
project led by postdoctoral fellow Zoe Screti. We are
currently developing a new interface for these two
databases which will allow users to query and visualise
their contents in a variety of new ways.
The Voltaire Lab continued to work closely with the
Sorbonne across various projects, and in particular
with the ObTIC (Observatoire des textes, des idées
et des corpus) project team, currently based at the
Bibliothèque nationale de France DataLab, and the
European Research Council-funded project ModERN
(Modelling Enlightenment). Lab co-director Nicholas
Cronk gave the opening lecture of the ModERN project
launch in May 2023. Postdoctoral fellow Roman Kuhn
is working closely with the ModERN team and the BNF
DataLab to construct a large corpus of 18th-century
digitised press, a corpus that will prove useful for
tracing the publication and reception of poésie fugitive.
Postdoctoral fellow James Gawley (a joint post between
ObTIC and Oxford) continued his work on identifying
Latin allusions in Voltaire’s Henriade and was recently
awarded an ‘ERC-Access’ grant by the Agence Nationale
de la Recherche to continue his work in Paris for the
next two years.
Two important conferences this summer (the
International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
in Rome and the Digital Humanities conference in
Graz) provided the opportunity to showcase the Lab’s
research in digital intertextuality and network analysis.
UNIQ+ research interns in the Voltaire Lab: l.t.r. Charlotte D., Isra, Aušra, Charlotte W
UNIQ+
This summer the VF hosted four students on the UNIQ+ Research Internship programme
run by the University of Oxford, which aims to widen participation at postgraduate level by
ofering seven-week research internships to talented undergraduates.
Our interns worked in the Voltaire Lab on a variety of projects relating to their research interests.
Glenn Roe and Zoe Screti in the Voltaire Lab
Visualising Voltaire’s life and works
I am primarily working on creating a
timeline of Voltaire’s life, alongside
an interactive map of his travels. I am
also conducting independent research
exploring his interest in science and
creating a timeline to contextualise
his work in the history of science.
Charlotte White
I am working on creating interactive
digital resources to help people learn
more about Voltaire’s life, works and
cultural impact. These include a timeline
of Voltaire’s publications and a visual
database / network of his relationships.
Isra Hussein
8 | VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT 2022/23