The Digital Classicist: building a Digital Humanities Community.

1. The Digital Classicist: building a Digital
Humanities Community.
Simon Mahony (University College London)
s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk
All original content is licenced under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

2. The Digital Classicist
• A case study for developing and importantly
sustaining a Digital Humanities community
– Background
• how did this all this start?
– Development
• why did it evolve in the way it did?
– Reflection
• what have we learned from all this?
– Future
• where will we go from here

3. Background
• Motivation
– A critical mass of people coming together with similar
interests
• Antecedents
– The Stoa Consortium established 1997: Ross Scaife
– Digital Medievalist established 2003

4. Background
• Early days
– Poster at DHR 2005 Lancaster (programme)
– CLiP 2006 conference at King's College London
– Seminar series launched at ICSL (2006)
• Institute of Classical Studies, London
• Building on what experiences?
– Department of Classics research seminars (KCL 2003-4)
– Work-in-Progress (WiP) Postgraduate seminar series
– Ersatz series (2004)

6. Background
• Early days
– Poster at DHR 2005 Lancaster (programme)
– CLiP 2006 conference at King's College London
– Seminar series launched at ICSL (2006)
• Institute of Classical Studies, London
• Building on what experiences?
– Department of Classics research seminars (KCL 2003-4)
– Work-in-Progress (WiP) Postgraduate seminar series
– Ersatz series (2004)

7. The Summer Ersatz WiP
Institute of Classical Studies
Work- in- Progress Seminars
Fri 13 August at 16:30
Senate House Rm 331
How to "Read" a Film:
"taking the classics department to the movies"
Kim Shahabudin
(University of Reading)
There will be refreshments after the seminar,
followed by a visit to a local tavern.
For more information, contact
simon.mahony@kcl.ac.uk or gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk
11/08/2004 11:27
The Summer Ersatz WiP
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Institute of Classical Studies
Work-in-Progress Seminars
Fri 13 August at 16:30
Senate House Rm 331
How to "Read" a Film:
"taking the classics department to the movies"
Kim Shahabudin
(University of Reading)
There will be refreshments after the seminar,
followed by a visit to a
local tavern.
For more information, contact
simon.mahony@kcl.ac.uk or
gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk

8. Background
• Early days
– Poster at DHR 2005 Lancaster (programme)
– CLiP 2006 conference at King's College London
– Seminar series launched at ICSL (2006)
• Institute of Classical Studies, London
• Building on what experiences?
– Department of Classics research seminars (KCL 2003-4)
– Work-in-Progress (WiP) Postgraduate seminar series
– Ersatz series (2004)

10. Background
• Conference panels
– Classical Association Annual Conference (UK)
• 2007 Birmingham: Research into people and places
• 2007 Birmingham: Interdisciplinary approaches to research and
pedagogy
• 2009 Glasgow: Ancient World and e-Science
• 2010 Cardiff: Linked data for archaeology and geography
• 2011 Durham: Teaching and Publication of Classics in the Internet
Age
• 2011 Durham: Ancient Space, Linked Data and Digital Research
• 2011 Digital Classicist Training Day
– Generic Web Tools
– Papyrological Editor

11. Background
– Digital Resources in the Humanities 2008 Cambridge
• A discipline-specific community of practice and interdisciplinary
methods
– APA/AIA Panel
• 2010 Digital research and developments in collaborative work
in Classics
– AHRC Methods Network Expert Seminars (KCL 2006)
• Open Source Critical Editions

12. Development
• Digital Classicist
– A network
– A central hub to link people and organisations
– A community of users
– Set up by and for practitioners interested in the
application of DH methodologies to the study of the
ancient world.

13. Development
• Website (www.digitalclassicist.org)
– The Digital Classicist was always conceived of as a
community, a network of users
– Links with other organisations
– Putting out information
• Seminars (the voice and focus)
• Conference panels

15. Development
• Wiki (wiki.digitalclassicist.org)
• No pre-set design structure
• Grows organically in response to users
• The opportunity for collaboration makes all the
difference
• Wiki allows ongoing peer review
• More than just the static website.
• Focus for a community
• Collaboratively compile, review and comment on digital
tools, projects, research questions
• List guides to good practice

17. Blog
• After an initial period incorporated with the Stoa,to
avoid repetition and to keep one central focus

19. Development
• Seminars
– Summer Seminar series ICLS
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2010
• 2011
• 2012

20. Seminars
• Become central to our activities
• Promotes research activity of our members
• Allow promotion of Digital Classicist
• Raise profile of our speakers
• Plug in and use social media
– #digiclass
– Stoa consortium
– ICLS
• Changes the focus and become dynamic
– Now space as well as time
– Audio and presentation files

21. Seminars 2006
• Leif Isaksen (Southampton):
– Network Analysis of Transport Vectors in Roman Spain
• Amy Smith (Reading):
– The Virtual Lightbox for Museums and Archives
• Eleonora Litta (KCL):
– Digital Critical Editions of Latin Texts
• Hafed Walda (KCL):
– Archaeological mashups in Google Maps: Roman North Africa as a case study
• Notis Toufexis (Cambridge):
– XML-based transcriptions of medieval Greek manuscripts
• Juan Garcés (KCL)
– Digital editing and collating of Greek Pseudepigraphic texts
• Timothy Hill (Cambridge)
– Only Connect? Text, Hypertext and the Commentary Tradition
• Simon Mahony (KCL)
– New tools for collaborative research – the Digital Classicist Wiki..
• Ruth Kirkham & John Pybus (Oxford)
– Building a Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities
• Willard McCarty (KCL)
– Modelling Personification in Ovid's Metamorphoses

22. Seminars 2007
• Richard Beacham (KCL)
– Using computer modelling to investigate relationships
• Neel Smith (Holy Cross, MA)
– Digital infrastructure and the Homer Multitext
• Boris Rankov (RHUL)
– 3D-Simulation of Ancient Naval Warfare
• Timothy Hill (Cambridge)
– Wiser than the Undeceived? Past Worlds as Virtual Worlds in the Electronic Media
• Michael Fulford (Reading)
– Silchester Roman Town: developing virtual research practice
• Brian Fuchs (Imperial)
– Lexical Communities: networking morphological resources in the Archimedes Project
• Dunstan Lowe (Reading) I
– intangible Cities: 'Authentic' Romes in Recreational Software
• Eleanor OKell (Durham) & Cary MacMahon (Glasgow)
– Creating a Generative Learning Object for Classics
• Janice Siegel (Hampden-Sydney, VA)
– The New AV Classics Database: a community-annotated resource
• Melissa Terras (UCL)
– Can computers ever read ancient texts?
• Stuart Dunn (KCL)
– Space as an artefact: understanding past perceptions and uses of space with and without
computers
• Charles Crowther (Oxford)
– A Virtual Research Environment for Documents and Manuscripts

23. Seminars 2008
• Elaine Matthews and Sebastian Rahtz (Oxford)
– The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names and classical web services
• Brent Seales (University of Kentucky)
– EDUCE: Non-invasive scanning for classical materials
• Dot Porter (University of Kentucky)
– The Son of Suda On Line: a next generation collaborative editing tool
• Bruce Fraser (Cambridge)
– The value and price of information: reflections on e-publishing in the humanities
• Andrew Bevan (UCL)
– Computational Approaches to Human and Animal Movement in the Archaeological Record
• Frances Foster (KCL)
– A digital presentation of the text of Servius
• Ryan Bauman (University of Kentucky)
– Towards the Digital Squeeze: 3-D imaging of inscriptions and curse tablets
• Charlotte Tupman (KCL)
– Markup of the epigraphy and archaeology of Roman Libya
• Juan Garcés (British Library)
– Digitizing the oldest complete Greek Bible: The Codex Sinaiticus project
• Charlotte Roueché (KCL)
– From Stone to Byte: Implications of the XML publication of inscriptions
• Ioannis Doukas (KCL)
– Towards a digital publication for the Homeric Catalogue of Ships
• Peter Heslin (Durham)
– Diogenes: Past development and future plans

24. Seminars 2009
• Bart Van Beek (Leuven)
– Onomastics and Name-extraction in Graeco-Egyptian Papyri
• Philip Murgatroyd (Birmingham)
– Starting out on the Journey to Manzikert: Agent-based modelling and Mediaeval warfare
logistics
• Mark Hedges & Tobias Blanke (KCL)
– Linking and Querying Ancient Texts: A multi-database case study with epigraphic corpora
• Marco Büchler & Annette Loos (Leipzig)
– Textual Re-use of Ancient Greek Texts: A case study on Plato’s works
• Roger Boyle & Kia Ng (Leeds)
– Extracting the Hidden: Paper Watermark Location and Identification
• Cristina Vertan (Hamburg)
– Teuchos: An Online Knowledge-based Platform for Classical Philology
• Christine Pappelau (Berlin)
– Roman Spolia in 3D: High Resolution Leica 3D Laser-scanner meets ancient building
structures
• Leif Isaksen (Southampton)
– Linking Archaeological Data
• Elton Barker (Oxford) & Leif Isaksen (Southampton)
– Herodotos Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive
• Alexandra Trachsel (Hamburg)
– An Online Edition of the Fragments of Demetrios of Skepsis

25. Seminars 2010
• Leif Isaksen (Southampton)
– Reading Between the Lines: unearthing structure in Ptolemy’s Geography
• Hafed Walda (King’s College London) and Charles Lequesne (RPS Group)
– Towards a National Inventory for Libyan Archaeology
• Timothy Hill (King’s College London)
– After Prosopography? Data modelling, models of history, and new directions for a scholarly genre
• Matteo Romanello (King’s College London)
– Towards a Tool for the Automatic Extraction of Canonical References
• Mona Hess (University College London)
– 3D Colour Imaging For Cultural Heritage Artefacts
• Annemarie La Pensée (National Conservation Centre) and Françoise Rutland (World
Museum Liverpool)
– Non-contact 3D laser scanning as a tool to aid identification and interpretation of archaeological
artefacts: the case of a Middle Bronze Age Hittite Dice
• Mike Priddy (King’s College London)
– On-demand Virtual Research Environments: a case study from the Humanities
• Monica Berti (Torino) and Marco Büchler (Leipzig)
– Fragmentary Texts and Digital Collections of Fragmentary Authors
• Kathryn Piquette (University College London)
– Material Mediates Meaning: Exploring the artefactuality of writing utilising qualitative data analysis
software
• Linda Spinazzè (Venice)
– Musisque Deoque. Developing new features: manuscripts tracing on the net

26. Seminar 2011
• Kathryn Piquette and Charles Crowther (Oxford)
– Developing a Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Inscription Documentation in
Museum Collections and the Field: Case studies on ancient Egyptian and Classical material
• David Scott and Mike Jackson (Edinburgh University)
– Supporting Productive Queries for Research (SPQR): Aggregating Classical Datasets with Linked Data
• Charlotte Roueché and Charlotte Tupman (King's College London)
– Sharing Ancient Wisdoms: developing structures for charting textual transfer
• Alessandro Vatri (Oxford University)
– HdtDep: a treebank and search engine for Greek word order study
• Agiatis Benardou (Digital Curation Unit, R.C. “Athena”)
– Classical Studies facing digital research infrastructures: From practice to requirements
• Timothy Hill (New York University)
– Semantics and Semantic Constructs in Cultural Comparison: The Case of Late Antiquity
• Elton Barker (Open University) and Leif Isaksen (Southampton)
– Mine the GAP: Finding ancient places in the Google Books corpus
• Sandra Blakely (Emory)
– Modeling the mysteries: GIS technology, network models, and the cult of the Great Gods of
Samothrace
• Marco Büchler (Leipzig)
– Bringing Modern Spell Checking Approaches to Ancient Texts: Automatized Suggestions for
Incomplete Words
• Daniel Pett (British Museum)
– The Portable Antiquities Scheme: a tool for studying the Ancient landscape of England and Wales
• Valentina Asciutti and Stuart Dunn (King's College London)
– Digital diasporas: remaking cultural heritage in cyberspace

27. Seminar 2012
• Chiara Salvagni (KCL)
– Digital Critical Editions of Homer
• Jari Pakkanen (RHUL)
– Pattern detection in archaeological data: quantum modelling, Bronze Age Aegean lead weights
and Greek Classical Doric architecture
• Angeliki Chrysanthi (Southampton)
– A visitor-sourced methodology for the interpretation of archaeological sites
• Alejandro Giacometti, Lindsay MacDonald (UCL) & Alberto Campagnolo (University of
the Arts)
– Cultural Heritage Destruction: Documenting Parchment Degradation via Multispectral Imaging
• Marco Buchler & Gregory Crane (Leipzig)
– Historical Text Re-use Detection on Perseus Digital Library
• Charlotte Tupman (KCL)
– Digital epigraphy beyond the Classical: creating (inter?)national standards for recording
modern and early modern gravestones
• Maggie Robb (KCL)
– Digitising the Prosopography of the Roman Republic
• Paolo Monella (Centro Linceo, Roma)
– In the Tower of Babel: modelling primary sources of multi-testimonial textual transmissions

28. Seminars
• Research papers in their own right
• Explore highly collaborative research in this area
• Collaboration always been core to Classical Studies
• Innovation and creativity in study of Ancient World
• Rigorous scholarship

29. Development
• Research output (wiki – ongoing peer review)
– FAQs
– Guides to practice
• Publications (peer review)
– Bodard & Mahony eds. (2008) '"Though much is taken, much
abides": Recovering antiquity through innovative digital
methodologies', Digital Classicist special issue, Digital Medievalist 4
– Bodard & Mahony eds (2010) Digital Research in the Study of
Classical Antiquity, Ashgate.
– Dunn & Mahony eds (forthcoming) Digital Classicist Supplement:
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Wiley-Blackwell

31. Community?
• Gemeinschaft
– Community
– Strong ties
• Gesellschaft
– Association
– Weak ties
• Oxford English Dictionary (online)
– s.v. community: 5B 'a group of people who share the
same interests, pursuits, or occupation …'
• Foundational term in social sciences
• Subject for another talk (Ferdinand Tönnies)

32. Community
• Community of users defined by what we do
• Events more than anything else define DC
community
– showcase for members research
– Venue for discussions
– Introductions and inspiration

33. Community at a distance?
• New technologies
– Spatial dimension less important
– Time becomes more so
– Symbolic
– Mental construct
– (seminars give a focus)
• Shared values and interests
– Feeling of belonging
– Psychological Sense of Community (SCI)
• Common needs and goals
• Interaction with rest of community

34. Funding
• Institutional reputation
• Funding models (changes)
• ICLS
– Expenses / subvention
• King's
– Hosting
– Infrastructure support

35. Funding
• Outreach
• Networking
• Public engagement
• Impact
• Knowledge Transfer
• Knowledge Exchange
• Engage wider international community
– Social media (Blog / Twitter / Facebook)

36. Reflection
• Building communities
– Community driven
– Discussion lists
– Showcase for members
– Sense of ownership
• To flourish
– Sense of community
– Sensible management
– Inclusive not exclusive
– All are welcome

37. Reflection
• Sustaining communities (at a distance)
– Community = foundational term for social sciences
– Reciprocity (Marcel Mauss)
– Community of users become stakeholders
– Value
– Focus
– Dynamic

38. Essential
• Quality (in all areas)
• Rigorous scholarship
• Advance research in both Classics and
Computing
• Meaningful to both research agendas
• Research must drive forward both agendas
• Institutional support and long term commitment
• Build a team

39. Future
• Seminars
• Conferences
• Publications BICS
• eHumanities Centre Leipzig
• Digital Classicist Germany
• Digital Classicist Berlin
– Keynote: Garbriel Bodard 23 October
• One day mini-conference
– Respondents from main stream Classics

40. Simon Mahony
s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/simonmahony