Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy, HistorySeptember 2026 – present
  University of Saskatchewan
• Master of Arts, HistorySeptember 2024 – June 2026
  University of Saskatchewan
  Thesis: Loud Yet Invisible: A Humanist-Designed Pipeline for Unlocking the Early Modern Archive
• Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours, HistoryJanuary 2020 – June 2024
  University of Calgary
  Thesis: A Common Place: Place-making in Gerrard Winstanley's Vision of the English Commons

Publications

• Clifford, Jim, Jacob Polay, Jessica Jack, Mark Humphries, and Lianne C. Leddy. "Reading the Archive by Machine: An OCR Benchmark for Historians, 1612–1921." Working Papers in Critical Search, no. 4 (2026). https://working-papers-in-critical-search.github.io/paper-004-ocr-benchmark/.
• Polay, Jacob. "Circumventing the Garbler." Intersections 8, no. 1 (2025): 28.

Public scholarship

• Jack, Jessica, Chloë Farr, and Jacob Polay. "Not Just Farming: How an LLM Helped Me Study Saskatchewan’s Smallest Settlements." Active History, October 14, 2026. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2026/10/14/llm-saskatchewans-settlement-history/.
• Polay, Jacob, Chloë Farr, and Jessica Jack. "Can You Read Two Million Pages? An LLM Can Help." Active History, October 7, 2026. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2026/10/07/named-entity-recognition-large-language-models/.
• Polay, Jacob, Chloë Farr, and Jessica Jack. "Stop Choosing Tools. Start Building Them." Active History, September 30, 2026. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2026/09/30/building-ai-tools-historical-research/.
• Farr, Chloë, Jessica Jack, and Jacob Polay. "The AI-Enabled Boom in Document Transcription." Active History, September 23, 2026. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2026/09/23/ai-enabled-document-transcription/.
• Polay, Jacob, Chloë Farr, and Jessica Jack. "The Archive is Not a Toy: The Hidden Problems of a 'Vintage' AI." Active History, July 13, 2026. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2026/07/13/the-archive-is-not-a-toy-the-hidden-problems-of-a-vintage-ai/.

Presentations

• “Fitting Machine to Page.” Jacob Polay and Keith Pemberton. AI and History Conference, American Historical Association, Baltimore, 16 October 2026.
• “Reading the Unreadable: Optical Character Recognition of Early Modern Print.” Jacob Polay. Canadian Society for Digital Humanities, Montreal, 4 June 2026.
• “Solving OCR: Using olmOCR to Follow Commodities across the British World.” Jim Clifford and Jacob Polay. Environmental Digital Humanities Seminar (Lancaster and Manchester), Online, 11 March 2026.

Academic and professional experience

• Research Assistant, University of SaskatchewanSeptember 2025 – present
  • Curated thematic reading lists across multiple historical fields.
  • Transcribed and entered data from a historical township registry into structured Excel spreadsheets for analysis.
• Teaching Assistant, University of SaskatchewanSeptember 2024 – April 2025
  • Led weekly seminars, facilitating discussion and critical analysis of historical scholarship with students.
  • Assessed written work and student participation, providing constructive feedback to support student development.
  • Supported inclusive classroom environments and assisted with course administration.
• IT and Data Manager, Rare EventsJuly 2022 – present
  • Managed deployment and maintenance of large-scale digital payment systems under strict time constraints.
  • Designed and maintained sales and inventory databases supporting events exceeding $400,000 in revenue.
  • Supervised staff and coordinated rapid technical troubleshooting during live operations.
• Research Assistant, Calgary Institute for the HumanitiesMay 2022 – September 2022
  • Conducted archival research at the Glenbow Archives.
  • Synthesized archival information into an analytical essay, assisting in the creation of an Energy History map of Alberta.
• Museum Interpreter, East Coulee School MuseumMay 2021 – September 2021
  • Interpreted local and regional history for public audiences.
  • Managed archival materials and cataloguing software.
  • Contributed to exhibit development for display within the museum.

Awards and scholarships

• Ivo Lambi Memorial Scholarship in History, University of Saskatchewan ($1,000)2025
• Terrance L. Cameron Award, University of Saskatchewan ($3,500)2025
• Dr. Stephen J. Randall Prize in History, University of Calgary ($500)2024
• Wing Kin Wong and Lambert H.C. Wong Memorial Bursary, University of Calgary ($2,100)2023
• Jason Lang Scholarship, Government of Alberta ($1,000 each)2022, 2023

Service

• Vice-Chair, History Graduate Students' Association (HGSA), University of Saskatchewan
• Founder, Footnotes on Film, a film-and-lecture series at Saskatoon's Broadway Theatre

Research and digital methods

• Archival transcription and data entry
• Optical character recognition (Transkribus, olmOCR, Tesseract)
• Named-entity recognition and text-as-data workflows
• Graph databases (Neo4j)
• Python for historical data processing
• Historical GIS (ArcGIS Pro)
• Large language models for historical analysis

Languages

• English: native fluency
• Latin: reading knowledge (beginner)

Coursework and training

• Graduate seminars in historiography, historical methods, and historical writing.
• Honours research seminars emphasizing independent archival research and writing, including intensive directed reading.
• Upper-level study in early modern England, Atlantic World history, and global urban history.
• Training in spatial and digital history, including undergraduate GIS coursework.

Research interests

Early Modern Atlantic World; Commodity and Environmental History; Digital History and Historical GIS; Artificial Intelligence and Historical Methodology