In 2014 the project awarded bursaries to 10 researchers to carry out research in their subject area using the UK web archive (particularly the dataset derived from the UK web domain crawl 1996-2013). The case studies that they produced showcase the richness of web archives as a source for humanities and other researchers, and are available as open-access publications:
- Online reactions to institutional crises: BBC Online and the aftermath of Jimmy Savile by Rowan Aust. Rowan examines the way the BBC has responded to the scandal, given that Savile is present in so many archived programmes and articles.
- ‘all writing is in fact cut ups’: the UK Web Archive and Beat literature by Rona Cran. Rona’s study is on the reception of Beat literature in the UK, in both academia and among the general public, at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
- Revealing British Eurosceptism in the UK Web domain and archive case study by Richard Deswarte. Richard reflects on studying his topic via web archives, with the advantages and pitfalls of this methodology.
- Digital barriers and the accessible web: disabled people, information and the internet by Gareth Millward. Gareth explains how his plans for using the web archive to study what was available to the disabled had to be changed because of the particular challenges of using web archives for research.
- Do online networks exist for the poetry community? by Helen Taylor. Helen used the UK web archive to investigate poetry communities and how they interact with each other, with a particular focus on The Poetry Forum and the online presence of the Oxford University Poetry Society.
- Searching for home in the historic web: an ethnosemiotic study of London-French habitus as displayed in blogs by Saskia Huc-Hepher. Saskia examines blogs by French people living in London, how their attitudes to the city change over time, and how those changes are reflected in the text and imagery of their blogs.
- Capture, commemoration and the citizen historian: digital shoebox archives relating to PoWs in the Second World War by Alison Kay. Alison is interested in the way that personal archives collected by citizen historians may be studied via web archives.
- A history of UK companies on the web by Marta Musso. Marta describes how she looked for evidence of the way that UK companies took their first, tentative steps in establishing websites.
- The online development of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and armed forces by Harry Raffal. Harry studies changes in the MoD websites over time, both in terms of their emphasis and the degree to which they are centrally controlled and branded.
- Looking for public archaeology in the web archives by Lorna Richardson. Lorna examines the way that the public thinks of archaeology, using web archives as her evidence base.