For those who missed the initial announcement (or for those who did not but would appreciate a reminder), it is worth noting that just two weeks remain until the closing date for applications for a post-doctoral position with the AHRC-funded project ‘Networking Archives: Assembling and analysing a meta-archive of correspondence, 1509–1714‘.

Launched just a year ago and led by Professor Howard Hotson (PI, University of Oxford), Professor Ruth Ahnert (Co-I, Queen Mary University of London), and Dr Sebastian Ahnert (Co-I, University of Cambridge), this exciting initiative involves working with metadata taken from a combination of the correspondence to be found in the Tudor and Stuart State Papers (courtesy of Gale Cengage Learning and the State Papers Online) and relevant correspondence within the union catalogue Early Modern Letters Online. The project team, of which the post-doctoral research associate will form an integral part, is combining quantitative network analysis with a traditional research approach to investigate the ways in which ‘intelligence’—both of a political and of a scholarly nature—was communicated. The successful applicant will be based in Oxford for eighteen months and will work under the guidance of Professor Howard Hotson to ‘study the intersection of political and intellectual ‘intelligencing’ in mid-seventeenth-century England, with particular reference to the genesis of the English half of the “circle” documented in the papers of Samuel Hartlib’.

Unlike the early modern employers authoring or receiving many of the letters with which members of the project team are working at present, those on the selection panel do not expect relatives to write with requests for the position on an applicant’s behalf, nor are petitions welcome . . . and as for ‘presents’ delivered in expectation of appointment, well, they’re also a straight ‘no’—no ginger, no wine, no oranges, no duck, no venison, no Dutch cheese, and no promise of significant financial return from a future venture! (These are just a few of the fascinating seventeenth-century recruitment bribes glimpsed recently during the disambiguation work on the Stuart State Papers metadata.)

However, scholars wishing to know more about the position will find further details on the Networking Archives project News page, and may download full details of the posting and the application process. Applications for the post should be uploaded online by 12.00 noon on 14 October 2019.

Details of letters in the Stuart State Papers, The National Archive UK, SP 29/408, fl. 13 and SP 29/166, f. 45. (Images courtesy of Gale State Papers Online)