Index 2.0

Description

Background | The Index 2.0 project aims to revive the Index Interpolationum, a giant work from the early 20th century that brings together centuries of scholarship on Emperor Justinian's compendium of ancient Roman law, the Digest (533 CE). The Index closely examines each line of the Digest, considering their authenticity, and provides alternative readings, which may greatly affect our understanding of ancient Roman law.

Index 2.0 | The goal of the Index 2.0 project is to bring the Index Interpolationum (1929-1935) into the digital age. By making the Digest text interactive and allowing users to switch between different readings of the sources, it will enable them to reconstruct the text, style, and doctrine of ancient jurists, as well as record their own insights about textual authenticity on a platform that will become an online meeting point of Roman legal scholarship. The project was envisaged by an international team of Roman law researchers, Marton Ribary (Royal Holloway), Joanna Kulawiak-Cyrankowska (Lodz), Giuseppe Di Donato and Craig Anderson (both Edinburgh Napier) in consultation with, among others, David Natal Villazala (Royal Holloway) and Benet Salway (UCL). The current workshop received funding from Royal Holloway's Reid Research Fund.

Workshop | The one-day workshop will test the feasibility of creating a relational database which makes the digital revival of the Index Interpolationum possible. Participants will attend an information session about the Index and its extraordinary importance to Roman law research. We shall discuss possible case studies in the history and doctrine of Roman law which the envisioned digital version will make possible. Participants will receive training in how to decode the shorthand of text critical comments in the printed version of the Index and how to then encode them to a relational database with a custom-made data entry interface created with Google Sheets, data validation, and Google AppScript. On either side of the lunch break, participants will test the data entry interface with and without supervision. In a concluding feedback session, participants are invited to discuss the experience and make recommendations for improving the ease and speed of the process.

Period	20 Apr 2023
Event type	Workshop
Location	Egham, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International