Another Carlsberg grant for LUMEN

Picture of a petition — In 1790, the unmarried mother Mette Margrethe Rasmusdatter submitted a petition to the absolute king for help in recovering child support from the father of her illegitimate child. She argued, among other things, with the natural motherly love she had for her child and the father's inability to care for the child's upbringing, but underlined at the same time his duty to contribute to its maintenance. The petition is an example of how the king's subjects argued to create meaning in their situation and legitimacy for their request for the king's mercy and intervention in a concrete life situation.

22 December 2022 by Camilla Dahm Jepsen

This year the Carlsberg Foundation brought an early Christmas gift to LUMEN. Nina Koefoed received a research infrastructure grant for the project Voices of the people - a digital platform for 18th century petitions (DKK 3.6 million). The project, which will digitise and transcribe petition records from the central administration of the absolute king, will make the 100,000+petitions that subjects wrote to the absolute king searchable and accessible to researchers in entirely new ways. The project builds on the experience of another digitisation project, Making the 18th century accessible, which was also funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.