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Insights from my Mapping Multifaith London Internship

 

 

 

Today Master student Ambre Peyrani shares her experience of an internship on the international Hubert Curien project entitled Mapping Multifaith London, led by Prof. Anne Page (LERMA, amU) and Dr Tessa Whitehouse (Queen Mary University of London). 

Beginning February 2025, I had the opportunity to work on Professor Page’s research project Mapping Multifaith London as an intern. As a Master 1 student, this internship has been very enriching. Throughout these months I established bibliographies, learnt how to use softwares such as Zotero and Umap, read manuscripts and corrected transcriptions before also completing some myself. Since I aspire to conduct academic research in the future, it was important for me to play even a minor role in a project such as this one. I undertook this internship not only with the goal of gaining a fuller understanding of the complexities behind a research project, but also to understand better why I chose this Master’s program specifically. A researcher cannot solely be trained through coursework, they require practical experience which I feel as though I gained as an intern for Professor Page.

Becoming familiar with the Project

After a clear introduction of the project, I was asked to “clean” and refine a bibliography pre-established by the team of researchers. I checked for any missing or duplicated information. With over 400 sources, this task was both rigorous and time-consuming. I learnt how to  work properly with a bibliography, which included learning and memorizing numerous formatting rules. I continued my work on this bibliography throughout the internship, learning how meticulous it is to establish a robust and well-formatted bibliography. During this time, I also managed other tasks. Re-reading and correcting Julia Laget’s transcription of A.B.’s ‘A View of the Dissenting Intrest in London’ allowed me not only to discover a manuscript that I would have been otherwise unable to read, but also provided great practice as I went from following paleography classes to working with real manuscripts.

Learning to use new Softwares

Excerpt from Umap

The project Mapping Multifaith London aims to establish a digital map of London’s dissenting and nonconformist, and other religious minorities places of worship. The software Umap was chosen to host the project’s map of choice, namely, John Rocque’s map of London. After becoming familiar with both the software and the identity of the cartographer, I was finally ready to begin my work. I would like to convey a big thank-you to Collin Harris who played a significant role in the making of this map and helped me understand how to effectively use the software. This training was particularly helpful not only for this project but for future projects I might find myself involved in. Once I was able to use the software by adding new pins or geolocations on John Rocque’s map, I was given the task of verifying that all the Anabaptist churches were correctly represented on the map, ensuring that each was accurately located. However, if one was missing, I was afraid of not being able to not spot it. Thankfully, there was John Rocque’s Index.

From John  Rocque. An Alphabetical Index of the Streets, … &c. Contained in the Plan of the Cities of London …. London, 1747.

 

 

John Rocque was a French Huguenot émigré who settled in England in 1709, and was a prominent topographer and cartographer. For this research, his index of religious, charitable institutions and alms’ houses was particularly useful and a great primary source. However, before being able to use these sources, a transcription was needed: that was the task ascribed to me. Professor Page provided me with photos of the manuscript and I transcribed the index, following Rocque’s alphabetical order. This transcription proved to be very helpful when it was time for me to make sure that all the Anapbaptist meetings listed in John Rocque’s index were pinpointed on Umap. Furthermore, I had to establish a bibliography of works made by or on John Rocque. In order to do so, I worked primarily on the Cambridge University Library website (iDiscover), and perused over 100 sources to fashion a select bibliography.

 

Conclusion

These five months of internship taught me more about research work than my entire Master 1 year, which was more theoretical. I experienced its rigour, its complexities, its multidisciplinary research process, and its frustrations as well as its small joys. Working on previously unknown manuscripts, learning how to use Umap, and working on the bibliography represent formative experiences that anyone should seize if given the opportunity. Being a part of this big project, even in a minor way, is a source of pride and something I am delighted to have do


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Laurence Lux-Sterritt (26 juin 2025). Insights from my Mapping Multifaith London Internship. EN-globe. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14af4


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