"Who actually uses digital archives and legal collections — and what do they need that they can't get today?"

This one-day hackathon, hosted by King's Computational Humanities Research Group in partnership with The National Archives, will bring together researchers, archivists, technologists, legal practitioners, designers, and students to spend a day working on that question together. Our goal is to think seriously about users, build ideas from the ground up, and share them with the room. It'll be a rare chance to work alongside people you wouldn't normally meet — across sectors, disciplines, and career stages — on a problem that matters to all of them.

What will you do?

The day will open with a short presentation of findings from an existing user research on The National Archives’ Find Case Law service — real evidence about how non-expert users currently navigate legal and archival collections, where they get stuck, and what they wish existed.

You'll then join one of three working tracks, each built around a genuine design challenge. Within your track, your team will work through a structured process: identifying who the real users of a collection are, understanding what they need, mapping what gets in their way, and designing a response.

How you work is entirely up to you. You might write code, sketch an interface, map a user journey, draft a policy proposal, plan a community event, or just talk through ideas and see where they lead. The only requirement is that by the end of the afternoon your team has something concrete enough to present to the rest of the room. No coding experience is needed!

Who should come?

We want the room to be genuinely mixed. You might be a researcher in digital humanities, archival studies, historical linguistics, law, or human-computer interaction. You might work in Legal Tech, design, or data science. You might be a journalist, a court reporter, or an advice sector practitioner. You might be an archivist or a member of staff at a library, archive, or cultural heritage institution. You might be a doctoral student looking for a day that will genuinely develop your skills and expand your network.

You don't need to be technical. You don't need prior knowledge of the collections or tools involved. You just need to be curious and willing to work across boundaries for a day.

LAHP-funded doctoral students will be given priority registration.

Places are limited.

Attendance is free.