Research Assistant (Part Time, Fixed Term)

This temporary part-time Research Assistant role is being offered as a result of an Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) grant in support of the project 'Naming Species in the South Pacific: Revisiting a Past Endeavour to Develop New Digital and Culture Collaborations.' The role is being offered for 10 hours per week for six months.

The IAA project is designed to facilitate impact resulting from the research undertaken as part of the ongoing AHRC funded project Natural History in the Age of Revolutions, 1776-1846 based in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. It revolves around two manuscripts written during James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific (1768-1771) that compile the first written floras of the plants of New Zealand now held by the Natural History Museum, London (NHM). As part of this project, these manuscripts are being digitised to be hosted on the Natural History Museum's Digitised Special Collections.

The primary objectives of this role are to:
1. Provide a transcription of the whole or selected parts of these manuscripts with guidance from the PI (Dr Edwin Rose), Co-I (Prof. Staffan Müller-Wille) and NHM Staff (Andrea Hart, NHM Library and Archives Special Collections). Applicants should be familiar with digital humanities tools and especially have experience in running hand-written text recognition software like Transkribus.
2. Again, with input from the PI, Co-I and NHM staff, translate selected portions of these Latin manuscripts into English. These, along with the transcription, are to be hosted alongside the digitised manuscript pages by the Natural History Museum. The manuscripts also contain occasional words and phrases in Maori, for which we will seek external expertise.
3. Ensure these transcriptions and translations are referenced to other related objects in the NHM collections such as plant drawings and specimens.