AI to help Trinity College Dublin find history's forgotten women

Four centuries ago Dublin had an official city "scavenger" who was tasked with running sanitation teams to clear streets of human and animal waste. In return, the scavenger earned tolls from shopkeepers and traders.

- Rory Carroll

It could have worked well except the contractor decided to cut costs and maximise profits by deploying just two carts rather than six. Dung piled up and the city stank. This upset everyone save the scavenger, who pocketed enough cash to set herself up as a money lender. Her name was Katherine Strong.

In 1635, the city fired her, ending an intriguing if inglorious career in public service. And then, like so many women of her era, Strong vanished into history, her entrepreneurship, creditable or otherwise, barely scraping a footnote in Irish chronicles written by men about men.

Trinity College Dublin aims to remedy that with an ambitious research project launched this week that will use artificial intelligence and other digital technologies to uncover women's experiences in Ireland from 1500 to 1700.

Jane Ohlmeyer, a history professor who is leading the project Voices, said: "Women are largely absent from historical narratives, with the historical record privileging the perspectives of elites and elite men.