This post is part of our Research in Reflection Spotlight Series, which will run through August 2025. After a decade of active and intense research and data creation, the WPHP is coming to a close this summer. To celebrate, this series shares reflections on the WPHP by our Research Assistants, Project Manager, past Project Manager turned Lead Editor, and Project Director, featuring memories, research, lessons learned, and ultimately the impact of the WPHP on the team who produced it.
Authored by: Kate Moffatt
Edited by: Michelle Levy and Kandice Sharren
Submitted on: 08/14/2025
Citation: Moffatt, Kate. “Research in Reflection Spotlight Series.” Women’s Print History Project, 14 August 2025, https://womensprinthistoryproject.com/blog/post/148.
Figure 1. From left to right: RA Belle Eist, Project Director Michelle Levy, RA Amanda Law, RA Salena Wiener, Project Manager Kate Moffatt, Lead Editor Kandice Sharren, and WPHP Monthly Mercury audio engineer Alex Kennard.
At the inception of the Women’s Print History Project in 2014, Dr. Levy, Project Director, infamously (and certainly erroneously) estimated that the project would include a couple thousand titles. Ten years, and more than 21,000 title records, 6,000 person records, and 7,500 firm records later, the project is wrapping up—despite there being no end in sight to the evidence in the print record of women’s contributions to print. Everywhere we look, we find traces of women authors, editors, introducers, translators, engravers, illustrators, compilers, publishers, printers, and booksellers, and if we had the money and the time, they would all be included in the WPHP. But the reality of digital humanities projects is that they cannot go on forever, no matter how much their passionate team leads and research assistants might wish they could. While the database and our data will remain public and available to researchers, the period of intense data creation that our team has been involved in for the last decade is coming to an end.
What better time to reflect on where we’ve been, and what we’ve learned? This final Spotlight Series—"Research in Reflection"—shares reflections on the WPHP from our current team of Research Assistants, our current Project Manager, our past Project Manager turned Lead Editor, and our Project Director.
On August 14, Amanda Law reflects on the multitudes of WPHP work—data creation, research and Spotlight writing, podcast recording—and the special place Phillis Wheatley and her book of poetry holds in her memories of her time on the WPHP.
On August 19, Salena Wiener's Spotlight emphasizes the experience of working with a team of women on women’s book history, and how the titles and records she has worked on have attuned her—and her PhD research—to the crumbs of evidence that can lead to riveting research rabbit holes.
On August 21, Belle Eist shares what it was like working on WPHP titles and records related to her research for her Master’s project: her experience with author Jane Loudon reveals the depth of research that can be required to flesh out the contributions of many of the women in the WPHP. A research rabbit hole that started with a delightful title—The Mummy!—brought her to an understanding of Loudon’s publication history that accounted for her personal, social, and business relationships.
On August 26, Kate Moffatt contemplates how accepting a Research Assistantship on the Women's Print History Project during her undergraduate degree in English shaped the trajectory of her academic experience. From final-checking title records with far too many author contributors and too many volumes by hand in the British Library, to sorting through the many addresses of all of the Dublin firms who moved business premises every year for ten years, to an obsession with colophons, to starting The WPHP Monthly Mercury podcast with co-producer Kandice Sharren, Kate can't imagine academic life without the WPHP (and so she is obviously thrilled to be using the data for her PhD research, which makes use of everything we've collected on women-run publishers, printers, and booksellers).
On August 28, Project Director Michelle Levy and Lead Editor Kandice Sharren reflect on the project from beginning to end. From the basement in Chawton House Library to the depths of the internet archive (and the Internet Archive), they have navigated team meetings, pandemic closures, and the British Library (and ESTC) cyberattack. In the face of the grim reality of humanities research in 2025, they reflect on the optimism required to undertake a research project of the WPHP’s ambitious scale.