D.E.E.D.S Project

D.E.E.D.S Project (Documents of Early England Data Set)

Michael Gervers, as a Killam Fellow in 1975, founded the D.E.E.D.S Project (Documents of Early England Data Set), which has been devoted largely to the study of the medieval English property exchange documents, or charters.

His online, searchable database of 11,000 English property-transfer documents from the late eleventh century to 1307 has been developed in conjunction with algorithms prepared by Andrey Feuerverger and Gelila Tilahun of the University’s Department of Statistics to apply accurate chronological determinants to the 95% of legal documents from the period which were issued without dates.

This and related research (assisted by his PhD students, Robin Sutherland-Harris and Eileen Kim), including participation in a recent Digging into Data (DiD) Project entitled ChartEx, is currently supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC).

He is presently expanding the DEEDS database to include digitized Latin charters from the 11th through early 14th century, from any source.