The Archives of Christine Ladd-Franklin
The Archives of Christine Ladd-Franklin
Durham University
Project overview
Project owner: Prof. Sara L. Uckelman, Department of Philosophy, Durham University
Funding requested: 600GBP
Project details
Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847-1930) was the first American woman logician and the first woman to complete the requirements for a PhD at Johns Hopkins University. After providing a new solution to an open problem in algebraic logic in her dissertation, she went on to have a ground-breaking career in psychology. She continued working in logic, philosophy, and psychology to the end of her life, and upon her death left behind a vast amount of unpublished material. Nearly a hundred years later, this material still has not been systematically studied. Recently I had the opportunity to visit her archives, held at Columbia University in New York, and work through about half of the material (focusing mostly on her logical and philosophical work), resulting in around 3000 photographs that need to be transcribed, tagged, sorted, and organized.
Consequently, I am in need of research assistants with interests in some combination of (a) logic, (b) history, (c) feminism, and (d) palaeography to assist in organising and transcribing these photos. Some of the work has already been undertaken, but there is still extensive work left to be done. Some of the materials are typewritten, and some are handwritten; some of the handwritten material requires an understanding of mathematical or logical notation in order to interpret it, but expertise in that area is not a requirement as there is plenty of other material that could be worked on. In addition to working directly with the photographs of the archives, there will also be opportunities to contribute literature searches and reviews connected to specific topics that arise from studying the material, which in turn may lead to potential co-authoring opportunities.
600GBP would fund a research assistant to work for 40 hours at the Real Living Wage.