2018-19: Broadening Understanding of How US Constitutions are Written

'Broadening Understanding of How US Constitutions are Written'

Knowledge Exchange Fellow:
Dr Nicholas Cole   |   Faculty of History   |   University of Oxford

Partner Organisations:
LLMC Digital   |   The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource)

Developed and directed by Dr Nicholas Cole, the Quill project examines the history of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in the United States. Quill's interactive representations and bespoke software have already been well received by both academic researchers and public educators.

Through the Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, the project will be able to develop partnerships with The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource), a non-profit organization connecting people to the documentary history of the creation, ratification and amendment of the United States Constitution, and the Law Library Microform Company (LLMC), a non-profit consortium of 500+ research libraries providing digital access to legal materials.

This collaboration will result in materials for public educators in order to broaden understanding of constitutional processes and democratic institutions. It will also enable Dr Cole to expand the scope of the platform to include the processes that created state constitutions within the US, a much-neglected area of constitutional history.

In the longer term, it is hoped that this dynamic multi-institution collaboration will result in a comprehensive online collection of materials relating to US constitutional history.