Workshop // 5A 

// Session 5A //
Longitudinal data and convict history

This workshop explores sources and techniques for assembling and analysing life course data for convicts and prisoners. In particular it emphasises the importance of standardised classification conventions as well as providing record linkage tips and examining different ways of visualising research outcomes. Using data from Britain, Ireland, Canada and Australia it looks at ways in which researchers can use the detail contained in court, police, prison records to shed light on 19th and 20th century working class communities. As well as traditional approaches for analysing longitudinal data the workshop will briefly explore ways in which life course data for thousands of individuals can be mapped or in other ways visualised.

About the Convenors

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a Professor of Heritage and Digital Humanities at the University of New England, Australia, with a particular interest in the way in which aggregate life course data can be used to shed light on past living standards.

Kris Inwood is a Professor of Economics and History at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. His work uses criminal justice data and other linked record sets to explore growth patterns and social inequality in past populations including first nations.

Barry Godfrey is a Professor of Social Justice at the University of Liverpool who led the highly successful Arts and Humanities Research Council Project, The Digital Panopticon. His work uses longitudinal datasets to explore the offending onset and desistence in past populations.