Mr Frank S Blair

I am investigating Irish trade networks in the late sixteenth century (c. 1565-1610), both between Irish merchants and the rest of Europe and with the inland Gaelic Irish.  I come at the subject from a background in computer science (programming, big data, and analytics) and my approach leans heavily on data visualizations generated by creating social network maps and applying statistical analysis.  As many of the records in the Irish archive either do not survive or were never generated, my work is based in the surviving English port books and supplemented by narrative sources (State Papers, wills, accounts, charters, funerary monuments, correspondence, court records, seminary rolls, etc) in England, Ireland, Spain, and France.

I have collateral interests in:

• digital humanities (especially opportunities relating to data visualization and applying "big data" methodologies to unstructured/narrative sources)
• medieval and early modern marks - mason's, merchant's, apotropaic, graffiti
• numismatics - Tudor and Stuart Britain, Thirty Years War period issues of Saxony, Sweden, and Denmark, and the Papal States (pre-1700; especially Sede Vacante issues)
• funerary monuments and memorials
• early modern ballads and their survival in the British/"Celtic" diaspora
• and ecclesiastical architecture, especially monastic