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Welcome to the Quill Project home page. Here you can find more information about the project, what can be achieved on the platform and the team behind it.

We work to research the history and enhance understanding of some of the world's foundational legal texts.
A negotiated text is the product of a formal decision-making process where a text has been negotiated and drafted over a period of time.
Think of the process as made up of four elements — people, procedures, documents, and decisions.

If it is your first time here and you would like to know more about the project, please check out the introduction video below:


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Search Results

The Quill Project

Welcome to

The Quill Project

Developing cutting-edge tools to help teachers, lawyers and researchers interpret and teach key historical texts

Watch the Quick Introduction

US Constitutional History

Writing Peace

Indian Constitution 1950

Australian Constitution 1900

Other Research Strands

United States Constitutional History

This collection traces 250 years of American history through a series of landmark constitutional texts. Our federal portfolio includes ground-breaking digital editions of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, as well as the later Bill of Rights and Civil Rights Amendments. Well-known federal landmarks tell only a small part of the story of US constitutional development, and in partnership with U.S. universities, we have also set ourselves the ambitious target of presenting the records of many of the 235 de novo state constitutions created since 1776.

LEARN MORE WATCH UVU Partnership with Quill

Writing Peace: Penning the Good Friday Agreement

After decades of conflict and against all the odds, the Good Friday Agreement was adopted on 10 April 1998 and endorsed by the people of Ireland in referendums the following month. Our Writing Peace collection traces the long journey to Good Friday by making available online for the first time a wide range of archival material and digital models of a series of milestone moments, including the drafting of the Downing Street Declaration in 1993.
LEARN MORE WATCH INTERVIEW with David Cooke

Indian Constitution 1950 (PACT)

The Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT) project is making a ground-breaking contribution to the study of successful post-colonial constitution-making, shedding light on the negotiations of the Indian Constituent Assembly that took place against the backdrop of Partition, communal violence, and the largest mass migration in history. Our team has just completed two years of archival research, bringing to light thousands of amendments tabled to the Constitution which have never previously been published.

LEARN MORE

DIGITIZING THE DRAFTING OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION

A recent referendum and discussions around leaving the British Commonwealth have ensured that the Australian Constitution has featured heavily in public discussion in recent years. Our digital edition, in collaboration with many of Australia’s leading academic lawyers, will make available for the first time the complete record of the drafting process, highlighting the issues that were most important to the drafters at the time while offering academics and lawyers today access to a wealth of data when contributing to contemporary legal debate.

LEARN MORE

Other Research Strands

In addition to its core research areas, Quill has carried out a number of exploratory projects, including work on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, the European Union Withdrawal Acts, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Most of these projects were pilot studies conducted with the assistance of Oxford University student interns, or, in the case of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, with the assistance of interns recruited by the Maison française d’Oxford. It is our ambition to work with subject-matter experts to apply for academic funding to produce definitive digital editions of these texts.

LEARN MORE
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  • Dr Nicholas Cole

    Project Director

    is a Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. Aside from the Quill Project, which he directs, he studies the political thought of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century....

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  • Ruth Murray

    Deputy Director

    is Quill's Deputy Director. She graduated from The Queen’s College, Oxford a long time ago and had experience in a variety of administrative roles in Oxford University before joining Quill. She...

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  • Lauren Davis Jarnach

    Senior Documentary Editor

    completed her Master of Studies in English Literature at Oxford University in 2018. Lauren started with Quill as a Research Assistant in 2018 and rejoined the team some months later as the project's first Documentary Editor and then its...

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  • Annabel Harris

    Documentary Editor

    is a documentary editor currently working on the Writing Peace collection. She previously worked across the Civil Rights Amendments collection, particularly on the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment projects and the Crittenden Convention.

  • Bethany Jedlicka

    Documentary Editor

    works on the Drafting the Australian Constitution Project as an Editorial Assistant. She graduated from the Australian National University in 2020 with a double degree in Arts and Development Studies, and worked in the National Indigenous...

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  • Holly Megson

    Documentary Editor

    is the documentary editor responsible for the current U.S. Constitutional projects in collaboration with Utah Valley University. Within this role she coordinates with student editors at UVU and oversees the National Archive Grant projects...

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  • Isha Pareek

    Documentary Editor

  • Maya Reilly

    Editorial Assistant

    is an documentary editor at the Quill Project. She graduated from the University of York in 2023 with a BA in English and related Literature. Her current responsibilities include overseeing two National Archives Grant projects: the Kansas...

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  • Molly Wilson

    Editorial Assistant

    is an editorial assistant at the Quill Project. She graduated from the University of Leicester with a BA in History in 2023 and is studying an MSc in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She works...

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  • Michelle Gavin

    Executive Assistant to the Director

    As Executive Assistant to Nicholas Cole, Michelle provides administrative support to Nicholas in his various roles in Pembroke College and the Quill Project.

  • Martin Lewis-Dalgarno

    Software Developer & UI Design

    is a software engineer and UI designer who joined the Quill Team in November 2022, after a year off as a stay-at-home Dad. Having worked in a variety of commercial development roles and industries over the past decade, he’s excited to be...

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  • Alex Janusz

    Junior Software Developer

    graduated from the University of the West of England in 2023 and is currently a Junior Back-End Software Engineer. In this role, Alex is focused on integrating and developing a new API for the Quill project, while also assisting Martin...

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How does Quill analyse an historical document?

Think of the process as made up of four elements — people, procedures, documents, and decisions.

This process produces a negotiated text, which is the product of a formal decision-making process where a text has been negotiated and drafted over a period of time.

These negotiations are often conducted over an extensive period of time, with negotiating parties putting forward positions and making small concessions to reach this outcome.

Learn More
Want to work with us?

Quill is a multidisciplinary research project which aims to enhance understanding of how key negotiated texts of the modern world. It combines a technological approach with the expertise of legal and political historians. Besides software tools and a detailed presentation of primary sources.

Working with Quill as a Postdoc

Dr Eleanor Williams reflects on her Postdoc year with Quill Project Director, Dr Nicholas Cole and discuss how it's been working on the Writing Peace project.

Do you want to be involved in our projects or have a project we might be able to help with?

Contact us
Looking ahead to 2025

As we approach the end of another busy year, this letter is an opportunity to thank you for your on-going support for Quill’s mission to offer an in- depth, comparative study of the complex negotiations that underpin modern constitutional government.

In this context, Quill has established itself as a mature, international project with a wide portfolio of research and a diverse user base, offering innovative technological and methodological solutions to confront these fundamental issues.

We want to share with you in this letter some of the ways our work has been recognized recently by the award of significant peer-reviewed research council and government grants.

Download the full pdf