Stuart Dunn

Use of the Edinburgh geoparser for georeferencing digitized historical collections

We report on two JISC-funded projects that aimed to enrich the metadata of digitized historical collections with georeferences and other information automatically computed using geoparsing and related information extraction technologies. Understanding location is a critical part of any historical research, and the nature of the collections makes them an interesting case study for testing automated methodologies for extracting content. The two projects (GeoDigRef and Embedding GeoCrossWalk) have looked at how automatic georeferencing of resources might be useful in developing improved geographical search capacities across collections. In this paper, we describe the work that was undertaken to configure the geoparser for the collections as well as the evaluations that were performed.

Arts and Humanities e-Science From Ad Hoc Experimentation to Systematic Investigation

This paper will explain the role, activities, and context of the arts and humanities e-science initiative in the UK, which is funded by the AHRC, EPSRC and JISC. It will firstly present last years pioneering phase with ad hoc experiments by the early adopters. Secondly, the award holding projects for the major funding scheme for Arts and Humanities e-Science will be described, as they start their work in autumn 2007. This second phase can be seen as one of systematic investigations where specific experimentations will deliver parts of an e-Infrastructure for the arts and humanities.

Arts and humanities e-science-Current practices and future challenges

This article offers an analysis of UK arts and humanities e-Science practices in order to identify current trends. It also considers challenges of how arts and humanities disciplines fit into the overall e-Science agenda. We will discuss a first phase of early experimentation projects in 2007 and continue with a second phase since 2007, which more systematically investigates methodologies and technologies that could provide answers to grand challenges in digital arts and humanities research.

Revisiting critical GIS

Even as the meeting ‘revisited’ critical GIS, it offered neither recapitulation nor reification of a fixed field, but repetition with difference. Neither at the meeting nor here do we aspire to write histories of critical GIS, which have been taken up elsewhere.1 In the strictest sense, one might define GIS as a set of tools and technologies through which spatial data are encoded, analyzed, and communicated. Yet any strict definition of GIS, critical or otherwise, is necessarily delimiting, carving out ontologically privileged status that necessarily silences one set of voices in favor of another.

Methodological commons: arts and humanities e-Science fundamentals

The application of e-Science technologies to disciplines in the arts and humanities raises major questions as to how those technologies can be most usefully exploited, what tools and infrastructures are needed for that exploitation, and what new research approaches can be generated. This paper reviews a number of activities in the UK and Europe in the last 5 years which have sought to address these questions through processes of experimentation and targeted infrastructure development. In the UK, the AHeSSC (Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre) has played a coordinating role for seven projects funded by the Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative. In Europe, DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) has sought to develop a deeper understanding of research information and communication in the arts and humanities, and to inform the development of e-infrastructures accordingly. Both sets of activity have indicated a common requirement: to construct a framework which consistently describes the methods and functions of scholarly activity which underlie digital arts and humanities research, and the relationships between them. Such a ‘methodological commons’ has been formulated in the field of the digital humanities. This paper describes the application of this approach to arts and humanities e-Science, with reference to the early work of DARIAH and AHeSSC.

The Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative in the UK

This paper presents the approaches within the Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative in the UK. It describes some of its early activities, and sketches out how virtual organizations can transform the way in which researchers in these disciplines can collaborate in the use of digital material. The paper is an attempt to position the specific research needs of arts and humanities within the e-Science framework and to show how the early arts and humanities e- Science programme is approaching a mapping of e-Science methods and tools on to arts and humanities.

Dealing with the complexity deluge: VREs in the arts and humanities

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to review the concept of the virtual research environment (VRE) in the light of its development over the past five years, and assess its applicability to the arts and humanities disciplines.Design/methodology/approach – Evidence from a number of case studies exemplifying the VRE approach is reviewed, and the case of a VRE in archaeology, the Silchester Roman Town project, is discussed in detail. The interpretive implications of using computers as a means of dealing with artistic and humanistic data, are highlighted.Findings – There is a critical comparison to be drawn between VREs in the sciences and the humanities/arts. This is caused by the “fuzzy” nature of data and workflows in the latter, as compared with the more formal and definable research practice in the former. It is proposed that, to deal with this, the plan of any project which seeks to set up a VRE in the humanities should consider the research process under three headings: processes which the VRE seeks to ...

Experimental archaeology and games: Challenges of inhabiting virtual heritage

Experimental archaeology has long yielded valuable insights into the tools and techniques that were featured in past peoples relationships with the material world around them. However, experimental...Experimental archaeology has long yielded valuable insights into the tools and techniques that were featured in past peoples’ relationships with the material world around them. However, experimental archaeology has, until now, confined itself to rigid, empirical, and quantitative questions. This article applies principles of experimental archaeology and serious gaming tools in the reconstructions of a British Iron Age round house. This article explains a number of experiments conducted to look for quantitative differences in movement in virtual versus material environments, using both “virtual” studio reconstruction as well as material reconstruction. The data from these experiments was then analysed to look for differences in movement that could be attributed to artefacts and/or environments. This article also explains the structure of the experiments, how the data was generated, what theories may make sense of the data, what conclusions have been drawn, and how serious gaming tools can support the creation of new experimental heritage environments.

Linked data for humanities research — The SPQR experiment

Ancient texts represent a primary source for research in the classics. A substantial body of digital material has evolved enriching these texts. Unfortunately these data are often distributed across myriad locations, stored in diverse and incompatible formats and are either not available online or are made available only in isolation. This paper describes an investigation into using linked data principles and technologies to build bridges between these islands of data to deliver an integrated data landscape through which researchers can explore and so seek to understand this data. The evaluation revealed that researchers were of the opinion that the linked data representation, and its visualisation as graphs, offers an intuitive and usable means of exploring and understanding the data, exceeding the capabilities offered by current online portals to classics data.

Reconfiguring Experimental Archaeology Using 3D Movement Reconstruction

The Motion in Place Platform was an infrastructure experiment which sought to provide a ‘deep’ mapping of reconstructed human movement. It was a collaboration between Animazoo, a Brighton-based motion hardware company, digital humanities and informatics researchers from the University of Sussex, King’s College London, and the University of Bedfordshire. Both 3D reconstruction and Virtual Reality (VR) in archaeology have been used to a great extent in the presentation and interpretation of archaeological sites in the past 20 years. However, there remains a predominant focus on their use as a means of illustration which, while enhancing the visual perception of the site, facilitates only passive consumption by the audience. This chapter reports on two linked experiments which sought to use motion capture technology to test the validity of digital reconstruction in exploring interpretations of the use of space, using domestic experimental round house buildings of the British Iron Age. Contemporary human movement was captured in a studio-based representation of a round house, and compared with comparable movements captured in an experimental reconstruction of the same environment. The results indicate significant quantitative variation in physical human responses to the two environments.