One of the greatest perks of being an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) within CASCADE is the uniquely designed secondments at renowned institutions. For my PhD project, The ‘Spirit’ in the Chamber: Capturing Zeitgeist in UK parliamentary debates, I had an invaluable opportunity to engage in an intensive 11-week secondment at the University of Glasgow from 30 October 2025, together with my fellow Sheffield ESR, Maria. I enthusiastically dived deep into the quirky yet fascinating history of parliamentary reporting, stories of data mining throughout the years, and hopeful prospects of yet another captivating research story of the UK parliamentary discourse.
Unlocking the Semantic Hansard
The core objective of my stay was to acquire and master the Historical Thesaurus Semantic Tagger (HTST)-annotated Hansard corpus. Hansard is the official report of UK Parliamentary debates, containing all speeches of the MPs and Peers participating in debates in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Hansard, as a publication, has been continuously creating a bridge between the public and the MPs who represent them behind closed doors.
My PhD requires a “linguistically critical” evaluation of how this data is constructed so that I can tell the story from my perspective: how the zeitgeist, or “spirit of the time,” emerged and shifted in the Chambers of the two Houses across decades and governments. Theoretically, it refines the abstract concept of zeitgeist into a data-backed, empirically verifiable construct, informing both conceptual history and corpus linguistics. Methodologically, the study evaluates the Kullback-Leibler Divergence as a versatile, bottom-up statistical metric, especially when used in conjunction with rich semantic annotation. Empirically, this research will deliver concrete, data-driven accounts of macroscopic British political Zeitgeists across governments.
In this secondment, under the supervision of Professor Marc Alexander, the Principal Investigator of the SAMUELS project, and Dr. Fraser Dallachy, Deputy Director of the Historical Thesaurus of English, I gained invaluable “insider” insights into the data. We focused on how semantic tags can reveal (or sometimes obscure) the internal composition of historical debates, and the rationale behind each corpus construction decision. This technical consultation was mission-critical, helping me optimise data schemas and query protocols to execute advanced “bottom-up” keyness analyses.
Beyond the Screen: Canterbury and Lancaster
My secondment wasn’t confined to a desk. It began, in fact, with an inspiring Babel Lecture by John Vice, at the University of Kent, in the beautiful city of Canterbury. The Babel Lecture has been a flagship public engagement event since 2015, hosted by the linguistic magazine Babel. The former editor of the House of Lords Hansard wittily delivered an essential editorial perspective on the texts I’m analysing. This link between the “official record” and the human editors who created it is vital for my research.
A major highlight was a trip to Lancaster University organised by Prof. Alexander. There, I met with Prof. Paul Rayson, the creator of the USAS semantic tagger, whose annotation plays a crucial role in my analysis. Receiving hands-on training from the expert himself on rule-based, neural, and hybrid versions of the tagger allowed me to develop a more critical and holistic approach to the tools I use.
One of the most rewarding aspects of this experience was learning to balance technical prowess with a humanities-grounded approach. It is one thing to process quantitative data, yet another to make sense of it through a sociohistorical lens. By engaging with researchers across Sheffield, Glasgow, and Lancaster, I have expanded my professional network within the Digital Humanities and Corpus Linguistics communities.
Milestones and Reflections
The secondment was as much about project management as it was about linguistics. I managed a “research sprint” to complete a full thesis chapter draft while simultaneously doing the secondment (I met so many experts in the field and had countless thought-provoking conversations!) and preparing a presentation for the CASCADE Convention at KU Leuven. This required a strict “time-blocking” strategy to ensure that my research tasks in Glasgow and my convention preparations both met the high standards required by the MSCA program.
I then returned to Sheffield with the full semantically annotated Hansard dataset in hand and a much sharper critical eye. This secondment has not only ensured methodological reliability for my PhD but has also provided the collaborative links that may shape my academic trajectory.
But above all: I can’t wait to see how my research will soon unfold and share my journey with you.