Melissa M. Terras | |
---|---|
Born | 1975 (age 48–49) Kirkcaldy, Scotland |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Academic |
Title | Professor |
Academic background | |
Education | MA, MSc, DPhil, CLTHE |
Alma mater | University of Glasgow University of Oxford |
Thesis | Image to interpretation: towards an intelligent system to aid historians in the reading of the Vindolanda texts (2003) |
Doctoral advisor | J. Michael Brady Alan K. Bowman |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Digital Humanities |
Institutions | University College London University of Edinburgh |
Website | https://melissaterras.org |
Melissa Mhairi Terras FREng FSA (born 1975) is a British scholar of Digital Humanities. [1] [2] Since 2017,she has been Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh,and director of its Centre for Digital Scholarship. [3] She previously taught at University College London,where she was Professor of Digital Humanities and served as director of its Centre for Digital Humanities from 2012 to 2017:she remains an honorary professor. [4] [5] She has a wide ranging academic background:she has an undergraduate degree in art history and English literature,then took a Master of Science (MSc) degree in computer science,before undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree at the University of Oxford in engineering. [3] [6] [7]
Terras was born in 1975 in Kirkcaldy,Scotland. [8] [9] She studied classical art history and English literature at the University of Glasgow. [3] She was given the opportunity to hand in her dissertation as a website,and,after learning to code,did so in 1996. [6] She graduated with an undergraduate Master of Arts (MA Hons) degree in 1997. [3] [10] She was then awarded a Scottish Government scholarship to undertake a master's degree in computer science. [6] She studied software and systems at the University of Glasgow,graduating with a Master of Science (MSc) degree. [3] Her master's thesis was supervised by Seamus Ross,and was a virtual reality model (in VRML 2.0) of the tomb of Sennedjem. [11] [12]
Terras then moved to the University of Oxford,where she had funding via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to undertake a doctorate in engineering:she was based jointly in Oxford's Department of Engineering Science and the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. [7] The project was concerned with using "image processing and artificial intelligence to help read Ancient documents" (specifically the Vindolanda tablets). [6] Her thesis was titled "Image to interpretation:towards an intelligent system to aid historians in the reading of the Vindolanda texts",and was successfully submitted for her Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 2002. [13]
In August 2003,Terras joined University College London (UCL) as a lecturer in electronic communication and publishing and was based in the School of Library,Archive,and Information Studies. [14] In 2010,she was promoted to Reader in Electronic Communication. [15] [10] She co-founded the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and served as its director from 2012 to 2017. [4] Since leaving UCL,she has maintained her links with the university as an honorary professor. [4]
In October 2017,Terras moved to the University of Edinburgh,having been appointed Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage in its School of History,Classics and Archaeology. [3] She was also a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute between 2018 and 2020. [3] [5]
Terras's research is focused on the intersection between computing and the humanities,particularly the use of computational techniques in arts and humanities research. Among the collaborations that she has been involved in is Transcribe Bentham,a crowdsourcing project in which volunteers help to transcribe the writings of Jeremy Bentham:the wiki went live in 2010. [16] From 2015 to 2017,she was co-leader of a project analysing Egyptian mummy cases by non-destructive means (via digital imaging technology):the aim was to be able to read the papyrus that makes up a mummy's cartonnage. [4] [17]
On 20 July 2023,she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). [18]
In 2024 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering [19]
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.
University College London is a public research university in London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of London, and is the second-largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment and the largest by postgraduate enrolment.
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The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London is part of University College London Museums and Collections. The museum contains 80,000 objects, making it one of the world's largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese material. It is designated under the Arts Council England Designation Scheme as being of "national and international importance".
The Doctor of Engineering is a research doctorate in engineering and applied science. An EngD is a terminal degree similar to a PhD in engineering but applicable more in industry rather than in academia. The degree is usually aimed toward working professionals.
Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. DH can be defined as new ways of doing scholarship that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publishing. It brings digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution.
The Vindolanda tablets are some the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are a rich source of information about life on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Written on fragments of thin, postcard-sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink, the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Although similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, wooden tablets with ink text had not been recovered until 1973, when archaeologist Robin Birley, his attention being drawn by student excavator Keith Liddell, discovered some at the site of Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern England.
Anthony Richard Birley was a British ancient historian, archaeologist and academic. He was the son of Margaret Isabel (Goodlet) and historian and archaeologist Eric Birley.
University College London (UCL) was founded on 11 February 1826, under the name London University, as a secular alternative to the strictly religious universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was founded with the intention from the beginning of it being a university, not a college or institute. However its founders encountered strong opposition from the Church of England, the existing universities and the medical schools which prevented them from securing the Royal Charter under the title of "university" that would grant "London University" official recognition and allow it to award degrees. It was not until 1836, when the latter-day University of London was established, that it was legally recognised and granted the authority to submit students for the degree examinations of the University of London.
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Alan Keir Bowman, is a British classicist and academic. He was Camden Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford from 2002 to 2010, and Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 2011 to 2015.
The European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH), formerly known as the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), is a digital humanities organisation founded in London in 1973. Its purpose is to promote the advancement of education in the digital humanities through the development and use of computational methods in research and teaching in the Humanities and related disciplines, especially literary and linguistic computing. In 2005, the Association joined the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO).
Transcribe Bentham is a crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, run by University College London's Bentham Project, in partnership with UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Library Services, UCL Learning and Media Services, the University of London Computer Centre, and the online community. Transcribe Bentham was launched under a twelve-month Arts and Humanities Research Council grant.
The Department of Information Studies is a department of the UCL Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Susan Hockey is an English computer scientist. She is Emeritus Professor of Library and Information Studies at University College London. She has written about the history of digital humanities, the development of text analysis applications, electronic textual mark-up, teaching computing in the humanities, and the role of libraries in managing digital resources. In 2014, University College London created a Digital Humanities lecture series in her honour.
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