Members, research centres and projects – May 2010 Members of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH) Claire Warwick, Director Reader in Digital Humanities, UCL Information Studies (Photo: Naomi Woddis) Claire’s research is on the use of digital resources in the humanities, especially electronic texts and digital libraries, and on reading in physical and digital environments. Claire is: x lead researcher of the User Experience group of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments project (INKE), funded by the Canadian Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which aims to produce new digital environments for reading and research in the humanities x Associate Director of the JISC-funded LinkSphere project, studying the use of social networking applications by humanities researchers x Co-Principle Investigator of the Humanities Information Practices project, funded by the Research Information Network x a member of the editorial board of ‘Informatica Umanistica’, the new Italian digital humanities journal x on the advisory boards of several digital humanities research projects, including the Synergies project, an electronic publication infrastructure for Canadian humanities and social sciences x a member of the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council Peer Review College x Vice-Dean (Research) for UCL Arts & Humanities. Claire has been: x Principle Investigator of the AHRC-funded Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts & Humanities project (LAIRAH) x Associate Director of the JISC-funded Virtual Research Environments for Archaeology (VERA) project x Co-Investigator of the EPSRC-funded User Centred Interactive Search of Digital Libraries project (UCIS) x co-investigator of several research projects funded by SSHRC’s Image Text Sound Technologies programme to study users of digital resources and the institutional context of digital humanities research x Chair of the International Programme Committee for the Digital Humanities 2009 conference. DH Insert.indd 1 Melissa Terras, Deputy Director Senior Lecturer in Electronic Communication, UCL Information Studies Melissa’s research interests include digitization and digital imaging, image processing, artificial intelligence, palaeography, knowledge elicitation and internet technologies. Melissa is: x Co-Investigator of the AHRC/EPSRC/JISC-funded Image, Text, Interpretation: e-Science, Technology and Documents project x Associate Director of the JISC-funded Linksphere project x General Editor of ‘Digital Humanities Quarterly’ x Secretary of the Association of Literary & Linguistic Computing x on the executive of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations 12/5/10 10:16:38 x a member of the editorial boards of ‘Interdisciplinary Science Reviews’, ‘Literary and Linguistic Computing’ and the Text Encoding Initiative’s Extramural Journal (TEI-EJ). Melissa has been: x Associate Director of the JISC-funded Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology (VERA) project x Principal Investigator of the ReACH (Researching e-Science Analysis of Census Holdings) project x Co-Investigator of the Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities x Co-Manager of TEI By Example x Vice-President of the Association for Computing in the Humanities. Melissa has written two books: ‘Image to Interpretation’ and ‘Digital Images for the Information Professional’. Tim Weyrich, Associate Director Lecturer, UCL Computer Science Tim is a lecturer in the Virtual Environments & Computer Graphics group in UCL Computer Science. Prior to coming to UCL, he was a postdoctoral teaching fellow of Princeton University, working in the Princeton Computer Graphics Group, having received his PhD from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2006. Tim’s research interests are appearance modelling, 3D reconstruction, cultural heritage acquisition and point-based graphics. Ulrich Tiedau, Associate Director Lecturer, UCL Dutch Ulrich is a lecturer in modern Low Countries history and society, and a learning technologist. He has worked on and across the borders of humanities and communication technologies for most of his professional life and published widely on Belgian, Dutch and German history, as well as on distance education and information science. Ulrich is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a development grant within the individual strand of the Open Educational Resources programme of JISC and HEA. Simon Mahony, Teaching Fellow UCL Information Studies Simon’s research interests are in the application of new technologies to the study of the ancient world, using new web-based mechanisms and digital resources to build and sustain learning communities, collaborative and innovative working. He is also active in the field of distance learning and a member of the University of London’s Centre for Distance Education. Simon is one of the founding editors of the Digital Classicist, organising its summer seminar series and various conference panels, and is also an editor at the Stoa Consortium weblog. He currently teaches electronic publishing, legal and social aspects of electronic publishing, and XML in UCL Information Studies. DH Insert.indd 2 Kathryn E Piquette, Research Associate UCL Information Studies As Research Associate for the User Experience group of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments project (INKE), Kathryn is conducting research on the experiences of student, researcher and leisure readers using traditional paper-based and digital technologies and environments. Her research interests also encompass digital humanities as it intersects with archaeology. She is particularly interested in the application of digital technologies to the study and visualisation of the technological, material and environmental aspects of ancient reading and writing. She is currently co-editing ‘Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium’. She is an Honorary Research Assistant at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, where she contributes to courses on Egyptian archaeology. She also lectures at Birkbeck College and the London Rare Books School. Claire Ross, Research Assistant UCL Information Studies Claire is a Research Assistant on the JISC-funded Linksphere project in collaboration with the University of Reading. It aims to develop a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) with web 2.0 features, which will allow cross-repository searching across various digital collections and archives. Claire’s research interests include usability studies, web 2.0 applications, social media, museum e-learning, digital heritage and digital repositories. She focuses on user evaluation and user-centred design of social media applications, online collections and cross-repository searching in order to produce a useful user interface for the VRE. Before coming to UCL she was E-Learning Development Project Manager of a collaborative project with the University of Exeter and Geevor Tin Mine Museum. She is a member of the committee of the Digital Learning Network. Anne Welsh Lecturer, UCL Information Studies (Photo Naomi Woddis) Anne’s research includes the health information needs of the elderly population (HOPE Project, led by Andy Clegg, Dunhill Medical Trust Fellow), assisting on the LinkSphere Project (UCLDH) and establishing the provenance of Walter de la Mare’s library and its impact on his writing. A regular presenter at international web 2.0 conferences, Anne is particularly interested in the application of new technologies to traditional information skills. She teaches cataloguing and historical bibliography on the UCL MA in Library & Information Studies. Until 2009, when she came to UCL, she had been a librarian for nearly 15 years, working in cataloguing, taxonomy design and special collections. Anne is a member of the collection management group of the Feminist Library and was recently appointed a trustee of the Poetry Archive, a free internet library of poets reading their own work. 12/5/10 10:16:38 PhD students UCLDH welcomes PhD students interested in working on all aspects of digital humanities research. The list below gives an indication of the diversity of our students’ interests. Rudolf Ammann examines the formative stages and emergence of blogging. Antonio García Castañeda’s research is concerned with the semi-automatic reconstruction of fragmented frescoes and other fragmented cultural artefacts. Alejandro Giacometti, Affiliate PhD student, is researching medical imaging methods and technologies and how they can be adapted in order to recover information from ancient documents. Robin Hunt looks at the mediation of two acts of terror: the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the attack on the World Trade Centre of September 11, 2001. His thesis considers the relationship of media production and issues of trust. Martes Paris is undertaking research on web archiving of online news media archives in Malta. Ernesto Priego’s thesis discusses the changing nature of comic books in the digital age. Henriette Roued, Affiliate PhD student, is working on a system to improve the interpretation of ancient documents, as part of the eSAD project. Timothy Scully’s research involves enhancing techniques to make realistic images of human skin models rendered in an interactive time-frame. For the contact details of our members, see www.ucl.ac.uk/dh Research centres AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (CEDC) at UCL The CECD is a Phase Two AHRC Research Centre (2006–2010), building on the earlier work of the AHRB Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour (CEACB). The CECD exploits the CEACB’s established position as a world leader to accelerate the development of the new discipline of cultural evolutionary studies. This is emerging in the interstices of several existing fields, including archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, human genetics and mathematical modelling, with the aim of understanding the evolution of human cultural diversity. UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) UCL CASA is an initiative to develop emerging computer technologies in several disciplines which deal with geography, space, location and the built environment. As an interdisciplinary research centre, its expertise is drawn from archaeology, architecture, cartography, computer science, environmental science, geography, planning, remote sensing, geomatic engineering and transport studies. This generates a unique blend of personnel who operate from UCL CASA and associated UCL departments. UCL Centre for Human Communication (CHC) People are social animals, putting communication at the very heart of what it means to be human. The UCL CHC is a virtual centre that brings together leading research across UCL focused on human communication in all its forms, and particularly on language. It aims aims to encourage and facilitate cross-disciplinary interaction among the full spectrum of UCL staff involved in research on human language and communication, in order to understand better normal function, and improve remediation of various communication disorders. UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage (CSH) The UCL CSH is the university’s leading multidisciplinary heritage academic research group. Its staff and associates are actively DH Insert.indd 3 involved in undertaking new research which meets the needs identified in the centre’s research strategy. Research forms a key part of the UCL CSH’s activities and has done so since its inception. A significant proportion of the centre’s activities have involved research projects focussing on developing existing knowledge and expertise in an interdisciplinary environment. UCL CIBER UCL CIBER is a policy-led, consumer-driven, interdisciplinary and independent research group comprising research artisans, who are skilled in all the necessary crafts – analysis, evaluation, presentation, communication and engagement. UCL CIBER’s particular expertise lies in making sense of how very large numbers of people behave and consume in the digital environment. To this end we map, monitor and evaluate digital information systems, platforms, services and roll-outs, using robust, big-picture, advanced and innovative research methods, in particular deep log analysis (a bespoke methodology for evaluating the digital footprints consumers leave behind them when they move around the virtual space), bibliometrics and digital surveying. UCL Cultural Informatics Research Centre for the Arts & Humanities (CIRCAh) The UCL CIRCAh research group undertakes research on the application of computing and digital technologies to the arts and humanities. UCL CIRCAh brings together expertise in digital humanities, user studies, digital libraries, human-computer interaction and e-Science. Our location within UCL Information Studies allows for collaboration with colleagues in library and archive studies. This association is vital in the study of cultural informatics, since libraries, archives and museums will be the future repositories for digital information. Thus they have a vital role to play in the understanding of such materials. ESRC Deafness Cognition & Language Research Centre (DCAL) at UCL DCAL started its research in 2006 and is now the largest European research centre in this field, with nearly 40 staff and research students, about a third of whom are deaf. The vast majority of 12/5/10 10:16:38 research studies on language and thought are based on languages which are spoken and heard. DCAL’s research provides a unique perspective on language and thought based on deaf people’s communication. DCAL places sign languages and deaf people in the centre of the general understanding of how language and communication work within linguistics, psychology and child development. UCL International Centre for Archives & Records Management Research & User Studies (ICARUS) UCL ICARUS is located within UCL Information Studies. It was established in recognition of the need to develop a significant body of research which seeks to identify, understand and meet the rapid social, technological and intellectual changes sweeping through the discipline of archives and records management. To this end ICARUS seeks to develop knowledge and to enhance understanding of the creation, management and use of records and their role in society, as well as to map, monitor and evaluate significant changes in the archives and records domain using robust evidence-based methods. UCL Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) UCL SCEMFA opened in 1995 and has provided the opportunity to focus on research into electronic media and fine art, contributing to debate on a national and international level. It brings together artists and researchers based at the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, each interrogating the material of the digital from a range of perspectives. UCL Survey of English Usage The UCL Survey of English Usage was founded in 1959 by Randolph Quirk. Based in UCL English Language & Literature, it carries out research in English linguistics and was the first centre in Europe to carry out such research using text corpora; many well-known linguists have spent time researching there. UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC) UCLIC is a leading UK centre of excellence in human-computer interaction (HCI), working collaboratively with industry and the research community, and drawing on the best scientific traditions in computer science and the human sciences. UCLIC is the only UK HCI centre with formal interdisciplinary support. For links to our centres, see www.ucl.ac.uk/dh Current and recent research projects Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (CELM) EuropeanaTravel Digital Lives Humanities Information Practices CELM will be a free online record of surviving manuscript sources for more than 200 major British authors of the period 1450–1700. It will incorporate descriptions of many thousands of manuscript texts, many hitherto unrecorded, found in several hundred public and private collections worldwide. It will provide a new research tool for those interested in particular authors and works, in the literary culture of the early modern period, in manuscript production and dissemination, and in the history of literacy and readership. Digital Lives is a path-finding study of personal digital collections. It focuses on personal digital archives and their relationship with research repositories. It brings together academics, expert curators and practitioners in digital preservation, digital manuscripts, literary collections, web archiving, history of science and oral history from the British Library. E-Curator The E-Curator project explored the use of 3D colour scanning and e-Science technologies to capture and share very large 3D colour scans and detailed datasets about museum artefacts in a secure computing environment. This project drew on UCL’s expertise both in curatorship and in e-science, on UCL’s world-class collections across a range of disciplines and on a state-of-the-art colour scanner, the quality of which is unequalled in the UK. e-Science and Ancient Documents (eSAD) The eSAD project aims to use computing technologies to aid experts in reading ancient documents. The four-year project, being undertaken at the University of Oxford with input from UCL will run until the end of 2011. DH Insert.indd 4 EuropeanaTravel is funded by the EU’s eContentplus Programme to digitise a substantial number of resources from major university libraries and national libraries of Europe to make them available via Europeana. The materials will include books, maps, manuscripts, photos, film negatives, postcards and other types of objects related to the theme of travel and tourism, one of the priority content types identified by Europeana. It is supported by the EDL Foundation and by two of its founder members: the Conference of European National Librarians and the Association of European Research Libraries. Humanities Information Practices is a Research Information Networkfunded study, which aims to develop a sense of the range of information behaviours in the humanities. Through case studies, observations, and interviews, this study will aim to understand how humanities scholars appropriate both analogue and digital resources in their work. It will highlight issues in the current information environment which affect user information-seeking behaviour in the humanities. Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) INKE is funded by the SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiatives Program, and involves 35 researchers and 20 industry partners. Its aim is to design new digital environments for reading and research in the humanities, and for the general public. It seeks to document the features of previous textual forms, to advance our understanding of how reading texts and using information are affected by digital multimedia delivery, to develop tools to produce accessible, flexible information architecture and to create dynamic interface prototypes for new knowledge environments. 12/5/10 10:16:39 Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts & Humanities (LAIRAH) The LAIRAH project investigated the use of online digital resources in the humanities to determine whether they are sustainable, and how and why they are used. LAIRAH was the first systematic study to provide comprehensive, quantitative, qualitative and robust measures for evaluation of real-time use of digital resources in the humanities, using deep log analysis techniques on automatically recorded server data. Its findings have had a significant impact on the way that digital humanities resources are funded by JISC and the AHRC, and have provided evaluatory measures for new projects developing digital online resources for the humanities. LinkSphere The aim of LinkSphere is to create a single virtual interface for searching across the repositories and collections held by the University of Reading. This will not only make the data and information more readily available, but ensure that all the resources that need to be accessed will be easy to find and interact with. The project will also integrate a social network for researchers that will show that such a system can help researchers get to know each other, enable collaboration and ensure that it is possible to work more closely together on cross-disciplinary projects. Livingstone Online Researching e-Science Analysis of Census Holdings (ReACH) e-Science allows large datasets to be searched and analysed quickly, efficiently and in complex and novel ways. Little application has been made of the processing power of grid technologies to humanities data, due to lack of available datasets and to poor understanding of or access to e-Science technologies. The ReACH workshop series investigated the potential application of grid computing to a large dataset – historical census records – of interest to historians, humanists, digital consumers and the general public. Reassembling the Thera Frescoes This is an international project involving archaeologists and computer scientists from Belgium, Greece, the UK and the US, in which UCL plays a lead role. Its goal is to assist archaeologists and conservators by digitising excavated fragments of wall paintings which have been preserved in volcanic ash since the 16th century BCE. Computer algorithms are used to search semi-automatically the fragments for matches. By creating an interface that bridges automated match retrieval and the intuition of an experienced user, the aim is to reduce greatly the time that is currently spent manually testing large numbers of fragments for matches. TEI by Example Livingstone Online provides access to the medical and scientific writings of the missionary, doctor and African explorer David Livingstone (1813–1873). The project provides detailed transcriptions of many of his letters and aims to make all his medical and scientific writings freely available online. It has also created a catalogue of Livingstone’s letters and has published a collection of essays concerning the historical contexts of his life, works and writings. TEI by Example is concerned with developing an online resource for teaching TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Featuring freely available online tutorials, walking individuals through the different stages in marking up a document in TEI, these online tutorials will provide examples for users of all levels. Examples will be provided of different document types, with varying degrees in the granularity of markup, to provide a useful teaching and reference aid for those involved in the marking up of texts. The Montefiore Testimonials Project TranscriBentham This is a collaborative project involving the Montefiore Endowment and UCL Hebrew & Jewish Studies, UCL Special Collections and UCL Learning & Media Services, to digitise, transliterate and, if necessary, translate into English the complete set of the Montefiore Testimonials. The Montefiore Testimonials consist of a collection of several hundred documents addressed to Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) between the late 1830s and 1884. Sent by Jewish congregations, communities, associations and individuals from all over the world, they represent a unique source of 19th-century Jewish cultural history. Open Learning Environment for Early Modern Low Countries History This project is part of the individual strand of JISC’s and the Higher Education Academy’s Open Educational Resources programme. The project aims to turn a comprehensive survey course in early modern Low Countries history into a multimedia and web 2.0 enriched Open Educational Resource. The project will focus particularly on relations between the Low Countries and the Anglophone world. The Bentham Project is preparing a new definitive edition of the collected works of Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, jurist, economist, political theorist and social reformer. The project has also produced an online database containing a detailed catalogue of the Bentham Papers. TranscriBentham is a highly innovative project to aid in the transcription of Bentham’s work. A digitisation project will provide high-quality scans of the papers, while an online transcription tool will be developed which will allow volunteers to contribute to the transcription effort: providing a crowdsourcing tool which will be used to manage contributions from the wider audience interested in Bentham’s work, including school students and amateur historians. Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology (VERA) The VERA project produced a fully fledged virtual research environment for the archaeological community. UCLDH’s role in the research was to address user needs and thus enhance the means of efficiently documenting archaeological excavation and its associated finds, and create a suitable web portal that provides enhanced tools for the user community. VERA developed utilities to help encapsulate the working practices of current research archaeologists unfamiliar with virtual research environments. For links to our research projects, see www.ucl.ac.uk/dh Cert no. SGS-COC-004224 DH Insert.indd 5 12/5/10 10:16:39 How to get involved If you would like to get involved with UCLDH look out for our announcements of forthcoming events on our blog or follow us on Twitter (details below). UCLDH events are a great way to find out more about the field, to meet people working on digital humanities research or in cultural heritage, to discuss your work and to think about new opportunities to collaborate. If our events have inspired you, and you would like to discuss an idea for a new research project, would like help putting together a funding bid or would like to discuss a consultancy project, please email us to arrange a meeting. If you already run a centre or project that is doing research in digital humanities or a seminar or conference in the area and would like more people to find out about it, we would be happy to link to your website, publicise events on our blog or arrange a Digital Excursion. If you are a researcher who would like to be affiliated to UCLDH, please contact us. We welcome research associates and honorary research fellows. If you are interested in doing a PhD in Digital Humanities, please also contact us, and we can help you find a supervisor who would be interested in your work. UCL Centre for Digital Humanities UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT Email digital-humanities@ucl.ac.uk Web www.ucl.ac.uk/dh Blog www.ucl.ac.uk/dh-blog Twitter #UCLDH DH Insert.indd 6 12/5/10 10:16:39