EdRLS office opened

EdRLS office at the University of Edinburgh is opened

by Lena Wånggren

Although we have been working diligently in our new office for a few months already, we finally thought it was time for a more celebratory opening of the new SWINC (Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century) and EdRLS office. Accompanied by fizzy wine and EdRLS cakes, and supervised by general editor Penny Fielding, we officially inaugurated our new workplace on Wednesday 5th October.

Lena and Marina

Since September,  I have taken up the post of Royal Society of Edinburgh  Research Fellow on the edition, working  on both administrative and research-related matters, and also engaging with issues of knowledge transfer. And since October, we have been joined by our lovely Erasmus intern Marina Held, who is from University of Mainz, Germany. Marina will be working with us until March, digitising texts and working on note matters. Needless to say, we are very pleased to have her here!

What we do here

The Edinburgh office is where we collect and produce texts, and also work on the critical apparatuses, for many of the Stevenson volumes. At the moment we are busy with Prince Otto, Dynamiter, St Ives, Amateur Emigrant, Weir of Hermiston, and Memories and Portraits. Much of our work involves textual digitisation, that is, converting scans and other documents into digitally readable text files, and also digital collations, from which the editors can work more easily. The office is also where we manage our general file-keeping, including the progress of all the volumes, and from where we run various literary events around Edinburgh and Scotland.

front row: Kirsten Banks, Sarah Ames, Marina Held, Lena Wånggren; centre: Alex Thomson; back row: Colin Bramwell, Penny Fielding, Bob Irvine

Rest of the team

In addition to Marina and myself, we have  two research assistants Sarah Ames and Kirsten Banks, who are both PhD candidates here at the English Literature department. They are both working with the editors of specific volumes, to make sure that digitised texts and notes are coming along. We are also very happy to have some of the volume editors Robert Irvine (Prince Otto), Alex Thomson (Memories and Portraits), and Andrew Taylor (The Wrecker), at the university – and of course also general editor Penny Fielding.

We were also joined by our undergraduate helper Colin Bramwell for the opening festivities and are hoping to add further undergraduates to the team for short internships to give experience of working on an international research project.