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British Religion in Numbers

British Religion in Numbers (BRIN) is an online centre for British data on religion. BRIN provides hard empirical evidence to underpin research into and intellectual debate about the key issues and trends affecting religion in Britain, past and present. It has four central features: a catalogue of British statistics on religion; a set of statistical time series; thematic commentaries on religious practice, identity and belief; and an up-to-date review and analysis of newly released reports and statistics. All of the digests, charts and commentaries are freely available to researchers and research users, including policy-makers, religious leaders, journalists and the public.

Data type: text

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British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database

Drama and Theatre Studies, Theatre and History | 20th-century, 21st-century, ethnic minorities, performance, Shakespeare, United Kingdom

The database, edited and principally compiled by Dr. Jami Rogers, contains the records of over 1100 productions of Shakespeare to which British black or Asian actors, directors and other production personnel have contributed. The database spans the time period of 1930 - 2015 and tracks casting patterns for ethnic minority performers. It contains information about the production, the media reaction to the BAME personnel's work within these productions, and lists the roles actors have played in the plays recorded. It provides a record of achievements and a statistical framework for analysing shifting professional opportunities over 85 years. The database is a major theatre history tool as well as having the ability to track casting policies from 1930 - 2015.

Data type: text

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Brecht into English: theoretical and applied approaches to cultural transmission

German, including Dutch and Yiddish, Languages and Literature | books, diary, essay, german, interviews, letters, plays, poetry, translation

The Bibliography is a comprehensive listing of Bertolt Brecht’s works published in English, regularly updated, with currently over 4200 bibliographical entries. It includes all the major English-language editions of works from Great Britain and the United States, inviting comparisons of titles with multiple translations. Each text is entered as an individual item (single poems, songs, stories, plays, dialogues, interviews, essays, fragments, variants), while letters and journal entries are entered only as collections. If available, every entry includes the original German title and the exact citation for the original text in the 30-volume Brecht edition published in Germany (Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Aufbau and Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988-2000), indicated as GBA. As well, the Brecht Archive call number for the English language edition or text is provided (if available), indicated as BBA, and refers to the non-circulating collection housed at the Archive in Berlin. Many translations were licensed for republication or reprinting without modification by other publishers, especially in English-speaking countries such as India or South Africa. These editions have not been included in the bibliography.

Data type: text

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Bess of Hardwick’s Letters

Economic and Social History, History | 16th-century, Early Modern, England, letters

Bess of Hardwick (c.1521/2 or 1527-1608) is one of Elizabethan England's most famous figures. She is renowned for her reputation as a dynast and indomitable matriarch and perhaps best known as the builder of great stately homes like the magnificent Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House. The story of her life told to date typically emphasises her modest birth, her rise through the ranks of society, her four husbands, each of greater wealth than the last, and her ambitious aggrandisement of her family. Bess of Hardwick's letters, which number almost 250 items of correspondence, bring to life her extraordinary story and allow us to eavesdrop on her world. Her letters allow us to reposition Bess as a complex woman of her times, immersed in the literacy and textual practices of everyday life, as her correspondence extends from servants, friends and family, to queens and officers of state.

Data type: images, temporal, text

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Becoming Coolies: Rethinking the Origins of the Indian Labour Diaspora, 1772-1920

History, Post-Colonial Studies | 19th-century, asia, colonialism, migration

A webpage presenting a carefully selected and redacted sample of 4,600 Migrants who left from Calcutta (Kolkata) to work in sugar plantations Mauritius, Natal (South Africa), Trinidad and Guyana between 1857 and 1869. The database was compiled for research on immediate post-1857 migration from north India.

Data type: text

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Afterlives of Muslim Asia: 2022-2023

Cultural History, History | ethnic minorities, ethnography, interviews, Islam, Judaism, Middle East, migration, Sikhism

The data collated is largely gathered through individuals with members of diaspora Afghans from a variety of religious backgrounds, including those identifying as Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Jewish. The study focuses on diaspora settings in which these communities are especially established, notably London and New York. Individuals were selected to be interviewed on the basis of their playing an active role in the life of the communities and also on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the researcher. The data also includes a discussion of the ethnographic work undertaken by the researcher in the form of a series of reports. Included also are notes in a book on Afghanistan's Hindu community (translated from Persian).

Data type: text

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Afterlives of Urban Muslim Asia: Muslim Perspectives on Non-Muslim Minorities in Aleppo, and Life Histories of Aleppine Armenians in Kuwait, 2022-2024

Cultural History, History | 21st-century, Christianity, ethnic minorities, ethnography, interviews, Islam, Middle East, war and conflict, working class

Questionnaires in Arabic were distributed electronically to Muslim residents and former residents of popular / working-class (sha‘bi) quarters of Aleppo through an Arab Muslim former resident of the Hilluk district of Aleppo who had migrated to Gaziantep during the Syrian civil war (2012-). Life history interviews were also conducted with prominent Aleppine Armenian members of the Armenian community in Kuwait: the priest of the Armenian church in Aleppo, and two leading Syrian Armenian merchants who run successful businesses in Kuwait and play a prominent role in the Armenian community there.

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Accessing Muslim Lives

Languages and Literature, Life writing | autobiography, Islam, muslim-history

Accessing Muslim Lives is about improving the accessibility of autobiographical writings from Muslim contexts through translation and digitisation so that they may be better used for teaching and learning, particularly in higher education. Through this internet-based collection of primary source extracts, students, practitioners and the general public alike are given access to the wide array of Muslim lives - both male and female, historical and contemporary - represented in these autobiographies. The authors range from scholars, saints and socio-religious reformers to princes, bureaucrats, nationalists, educators, writers and actors.

Data type: text

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A Big Data History of Music

History of Music, Music | 16th-century, 17th-century, 20th-century, eighteenth century, library, manuscripts, nineteenth century

British Library dataset of printed music, freely available for download and analysis, as a result of the data cleaning undertaken in this project.

Data type: text

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100 Ballads

Music, Traditional Music | crime, Early Modern, England, music, seventeenth century

Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website concentrates on over 100 resoundingly successful examples that you can investigate through recordings, images and a wealth of other materials. Whether you are interested in music, art, love, gender, tragedy, politics, family life, crime, history, humour or death, you will find something to engage you here.

Data type: audio, images, text

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