Featured Posts | Professor Joe Cain

Graduates celebrating after UCL ceremony.

Letters of Reference and Recommendation

Students ask for letters of reference and recommendation. Writing them is an important responsibility for tutors. It’s something we take extremely seriously. But what goes into a letter of recommendation? Top Tips When Requesting References […]

Clarity at last! Use this hierarchy of elements in podcasting

Vague terminology in podcasting confuses expectations and ambitions. A proposal to “make a podcast” can sound simultaneously daunting and simple. One person might describe a short mp3 dictation of a story as a “mini podcast”. […]

Broadcast clock generator sample 30 minute episode

Broadcast Clock Generator App

I needed a quick and easy broadcast clock for creating podcast episodes. (There is a great episode of ‘99% Invisible’ on broadcast clocks that is well worth listening to.) While I found a few apps […]

Sample Medical Card for Croydon Schoolboys 1920s-1930s

Medical Cards for Croydon Schoolchildren 1920s-1930s

Historians must make more – and more creative – use of AI technologies for data analysis as well as for routine task of data sorting and transcription. To create a simple example, I have put […]

John Martin's 1837 The Country of the Iguanodon

The Country of the Iguanodon, by Gideon Mantell – Two Versions

“The Country of the Iguanodon” is Gideon Mantell’s attempt to imagine the paleoecology of dinosaurs. Transcripts of 1838 and 1851 descriptions.

[…]

Gideon Mantell (1851) Petrifactions and Their Teaching, frontispiece, Notoris mantelli

Gideon Mantell’s 1851 Guide to Fossils at British Museum

Gideon Mantell’s 1851 guide to fossils at British Museum, including Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, Hylaeosaurus, marine reptiles, and more.

[…]

Illustration of "ring species" concept, or Rassenkreis

Society for the Study of Speciation: Bibliographic Analysis using LLM

I provide data for an LLM-based analysis of the short-lived Society for the Study of Speciation (SSS), organised by Alfred Emerson, through three documents.

[…]

Proceedings of the Seventh International Genetical Congress held in 1939 and published in 1941.

International Genetical Congress (1939, Seventh): Queries using LLM

What work can large-language models (LLMs) do for historical researching? They offer tools for voluminous compilation of data ready for complex human analysis. They can organise and reorganise data. They can extract data from source material. They can be set to search for trends. We’re coming to grips with LLM tools for historical researching, and we’re quickly moving well beyond the LLM-as-author model so distrusted in our community. Historians must push ourselves to be as creative and demanding of LLM resources as those in our sister disciplines.

[…]

Bernissart Iguanodons in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels

The Dinosaur Gallery in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (Brussels Museum of Natural History) includes the famous Bernissart Iguanodons. This consists of thirty complete or nearly complete skeletons excavated from an underground coal […]

SWOT analysis banner presented as interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces

GenAI Helps Review Patterns in Student SWOT Projects for Publishing Module (Postgraduate)

I’ve used generative AI to help me review patterns in my marking and feedback given for student assignments in the module, HPSC0044 Publishing as Science Communication. This module is taught at UCL as both a […]

Professor Joe Cain

UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology

Highlights