Exploring the archival model of the state with Linked Data

This PhD project will examine how a Linked Data model about governmental departments’ evolution over time can be utilised to explore areas of interests for policymakers and academics. This will include shifts in departmental responsibility and the balance of power between local and central government. 

As the official archive for the UK Government, and for England and Wales, The National Archives maintains, standardises and enriches information about governmental departments (Authority Control) and the machinery of government. The National Archives also holds a number of datasets relating to UK legislation and, following their recent relocation, the archives of the UK Parliament.

Currently, however, the data from which the information on the machinery of government can be drawn resides in different states of readiness for enabling new ways of discovery and exploiting the opportunities offered by emerging technologies. Linked Data is increasingly adopted in the cultural heritage sector to address these issues by making the relationships between entities (organisations, dates, places and more) explicit and searchable. 

The purpose of this PhD project is to investigate the potential of Linked Data to provide new ways of  understanding changes in government over time through archival data. This project offers the opportunity to map the connections between the UK's governmental bodies and the records they produced and to make them navigable and machine-processable at scale. This will empower users to conduct new ways of scholarship on the archives of the state.

For more information about this project, please get in touch with The National Archives’ project team: Marco Humbel and Scott Anthony.

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Submit your Expression of Interest here

Please submit your expression of interest using this form. The closing date for receiving EOIs is 17.00 on Friday 9th October 2026.