[Hum-DIS] Fwd: Invitation to a public lecture at UWA (the Evolution of Record-Keeping as a Means of Understanding Criminality, 1780–1860) - 28 June 2016

[Lise Summers]

WA students, past and present, may be interested in the invitation below

Lise Summers
Lecturer

Dear Colleagues,

I am forwarding an invitation to ASA WA Branch members to a public
lecture at the University of WA on 28 June 2016.

Details are as follows:

CMEMS/History Public Lecture: "The Evolution of Record-Keeping as a
Means of Understanding Criminality, 1780–1860" by Robert Shoemaker
(The University of Sheffield). Tuesday 28 June 2016, 6-7pm, Webb
Lecture Theatre (Geography & Geology Building), UWA.

All Welcome - you don't need to RSVP (just come along!!).

For other enquiries, contact joanne.mcewan at uwa.edu.au.

ABSTRACT: This paper seeks to understand why detailed personal
information about accused criminals, the data which makes the Digital
Panopticon project (http://www.digitalpanopticon.org/) possible,
started to be collected from the late eighteenth century. Whereas
little information beyond the name of most criminals was kept at the
start of this period, by 1860 information about their personal and
criminal histories and physical descriptions was routinely recorded.
The initiative to start keeping such records came from both new
official requirements and personal and local initiatives. Records were
often compiled to meet functional requirements to assist with the
prosecution of crime and punishment of criminals, but this explanation
does not explain why information was kept about so many personal
characteristics, in such detail, and often long before it was
officially required. This paper argues that such record-keeping was
often driven by local initiatives and imperatives, and that this
reveals the development of a grass-roots information-gathering
culture. Ultimately, the substantial amount of information generated
reveals a strong and widely held desire to understand crime, long
before the self-conscious enterprise of ‘criminology’ was invented.

Bob Shoemaker is Professor of Eighteenth-Century British History at
the University of Sheffield and Co-Investigator on the Digital
Panopticon project. For more information, see:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/staff/robert-shoemaker



Gerard Foley

Convenor WA Branch: Australian Society of Archivists