Throughout the summer of 2022 a very able and enthusiastic intern was working in the Edge Hill Archive!
Jack Bennett, who studies Creative Writing, has played an important part in kicking off our project to construct a history of Edge Hill College between 1885 and 1909 by exploring who were the women who trained at the teacher training institution? He began his data collection and research using the student registration cards which were produced for every incoming student trainee.
Jack said about his work:
I first learnt about the Edge Hill University Archive from my creative writing lecturer, who told me that my creative piece regarding a mysterious door on campus would be of interest to them. Fast forward six-or-so months and I’m currently on a 20-week internship working at the archive! My job is to catalogue the early students’ index cards (before doing deeper research using other online databases as well as a range of records we have internally). I have encountered many questions on the cards already; there are codes and acronyms yet to be deciphered, overseas students, missing cards, illegible handwriting, and gaps to be filled. The experience I’m gaining from the internship is so valuable to me, but my work with the cards is creatively fulfilling, too. I see the cards as miniature biographies, and much like a writer will do with their characters, this is a process, first and foremost, about working out and uncovering the lives of past students.
The funding for an intern to work in the archive was obtained by a successful bid to the Edge Hill Institute for Social Responsibility https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/research/isr/ – Thank you!