Author of William the Conqueror's 'Medieval Big Data' Project Revealed
The findings challenge long-held assumptions about the scale and intent of William the Conqueror’s great survey. Drawing on the earliest surviving manuscript of the survey, known as Exon Domesday, researchers argue that the survey was not simply a means of maximising tax but a far more ambitious and intricate exercise in governmental control - akin to an 11th-century form of big data processing. Professor Stephen Baxter (University of Oxford), Professor Julia Crick (King’s College London), and