Elliot Andrews was awarded a bursary to attend the TEI strand of the Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School in 2025. To join the mailing list and learn about the next summer school sign up here. Read about Elliot's experience at the summer school here:
The Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School (DHOxSS) took place between 4th August and 8th August 2025, uniting a wide range of participants, including undergraduate and postgraduate students, academics, and professionals from a multitude of fields, with a wide range of digital experience and levels of confidence.
I am currently a second year PhD student in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester, exploring Punch’s self-described literary Brotherhood through its correspondence. In this project, I use a combination of digital techniques and traditional literary approaches, but previously had no knowledge of TEI, and very little knowledge of XML. I was consequently drawn to this strand due to my use of archival materials with the aim to bridge this gap in my knowledge. Without prior experience or knowledge in TEI, however, I was apprehensive that I may struggle with the course and its intensive structure, but was happily surprised by how accessible the course was.
Immediately, it was clear that this course had been expertly designed to support and challenge participants regardless of their experience in XML, XPath, and TEI, providing an inclusive, patient, and encouraging atmosphere in which to learn.
Beginning with the basic elements of XML and TEI, as taught by Huw Jones, and expanded upon by Matthew Holford, the course fluidly built our skills during the week. Quickly, the course began to introduce more specific uses of TEI, including Yasmin Faghihi’s workshops on approaching manuscript encoding, and Sebastian Dows-Miller and Mike Hawkins’s tutorials on XPath – which proved to be a tricky but rewarding method of navigating encoded documents!
Most excitingly, as a student working primarily on correspondence, was the guest workshop held by Elizabeth Smith from the Darwin Correspondence Project. During this workshop, I learnt invaluable information about an established, large-scale’s projects method of encoding and using correspondence, in order to gain invaluable insights into the texts. As a result, I learnt effective methods of using TEI for correspondence and was able to trial these methods through hands-on activities.
As a hands-on learner, the ability to complete exercises using each new piece of knowledge, and then gain feedback (and help where needed!) helped me to fully understand the information that was taught, and able to ask questions that otherwise would not have occurred to me. Most importantly, puzzling through the problems set in the tasks was enjoying and satisfying, making me increasingly excited about the prospect of implementing these methods in my own work!
Aside from the workshops themselves, what struck me was the thought given to encouraging a community between participants, through events including pub visits after a day of learning, the banquet dinner, drinks reception, and guided tours. These events provided us with the opportunity to learn more about participants across the Summer School, allowing me to meet a large number of Digital Humanities users across disciplines, institutions, and countries.
Already, I have begun to use the skills that I have learnt through this Summer School, practising encoding small sets of Punch correspondence. I have also begun to expand my learning beyond the Summer School, using the provided resources to continue developing my skills in XML and TEI. Consequently, I have already begun to notice new elements of interest in my data, and look forward to continuing this process in order to illuminate the Brotherhood further.
I would like to thank Oxford University for awarding me a bursary to attend the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School and for supporting travel and accommodation costs alongside the costs for attendance itself, across the five days.
