DAMMES is a proposed pilot project to train an AI mode to recognize and transcribe a large number of handwritten criminal court records produced in the Provençal town of Manosque in the fourteenth century. An additional LLM would then be deployed to provide partial translations in English and French. The ultimate objective of DAMMES is to produce a public-facing, fully searchable database that links to images and transcriptions of records in Latin, English, and French. Additionally

Currently, DAMMES has secured modest internal seed funding from St. Jerome’s University in the form of a Faculty Research Grant to prepare a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (IDG) application. If approved, IDG funding would allow six research assistants, two collaborators, and the P.I. Dr. Steven Bednarski, to undertake the work over a period of two years.

People

Dr. Steven Bednarski
Director, DRAGEN Lab
Primary Investigator, Environments of Change