Dr Stephen Turton is to lead a project to digitise the letters which enabled the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, after receiving a prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant.

Dr Turton, who joined Gonville & Caius College as a Research Fellow in October 2021, will undertake the five-year research project at the University of Oxford. He is one of 421 early-career researchers to receive funding worth €705 million in total, the ERC said.

“The project will create a digital edition of the letters of James A. H. Murray, the first chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 to 1915,” says Dr Turton, pictured. 

“Making the OED would not have been possible without the information Murray received about words, their meanings, and their origins from hundreds of scholars, authors, and volunteers writing to him from around the world. 

“The largest collection of these letters—over 7,000—is held by the Bodleian Library. The aim of the project is to transcribe and publish the entire collection, using it to reconstruct and analyse Murray's global web of correspondence through commentaries, maps and network graphs.” 

Dr Turton is also celebrating an award for work completed during his Caius Research Fellowship. His first book, Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary, 1600–1930, has been awarded a prize by the European Society for the Study of English at the organisation’s annual conference in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Learn more about Dr Turton’s work in an interview on the College website from 2022: Dictionary learning | Gonville & Caius

The Caius Research Fellowship is open for applications until September 30. For more information, visit: Research Fellowship Competition | Gonville & Caius and Academic Vacancies | Gonville & Caius