The Digital Classicist is a community of those interested in the application of

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

to the field of

classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students with an interest in computing and the ancient world, and disseminating advice and experience to the classics discipline at large. The Digital Classicist was founded in 2005 as a collaborative project based at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

and the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

, with editors and advisors from the classics discipline at large.

Activities of The Digital Classicist

Membership

Many notable Classicists and Digital Humanists are on the advisory board of the Digital Classicist, including Richard Beacham (of the King's Visualisation Lab), Alan Bowman (professor of

Ancient History Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cove ...

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

), Gregory Crane (of the

Perseus Project The Perseus Project is a digital library project of Tufts University, which assembles digital collections of humanities resources. Version 4.0 is also known as the "Perseus Hopper", and it is hosted by the Department of Classical Studies. The proj ...

), Bernard Frischer (of the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory),

Michael Fulford Michael Gordon Fulford, (born October 1948) is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in the British Iron Age, Roman Britain and landscape archaeology. He has been Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading since 1993. E ...

(professor of

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...

and pro-vice-chancellor at

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

), Willard McCarty (winner of the Lyman Award and professor of Humanities Computing at

Department of Digital Humanities The Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) is an academic department and research centre in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King's College London. DDH counts amongst the "most visible" digital humanities centres worldwide. Its research acti ...

), James O'Donnell (provost of

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate ...

), Silvio Panciera (of

University of Rome La Sapienza The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

), and

Boris Rankov Nikolas Boris Rankov (born 9 August 1954) is a British professor of Roman history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a former rower and current umpire. Early life, education and family Rankov was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, ...

(professor of Ancient History at

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic depa ...

). A former member was the late

Ross Scaife Allen Ross Scaife (born March 31, 1960, Fredericksburg, Virginia – died March 15, 2008, Lexington, Kentucky) was a Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky. Life Ross Scaife was born to William and Sylvia Scaife in Fredericksburg, ...

(Stoa Consortium and

Blog

The Digital Classicist community have taken an active role in posting news to the long-standing blog of the Stoa Consortium, which concerns itself with both classical and digital humanities topics. A particular focus seems to be the

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

and

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

movements, and various communities of scholars with digital interests.

Discussion list

The Digital Classicist discussion list is hosted by JISCmail in the UK. Most list traffic consists of announcements and calls, with occasional flurries of more involved discussion.

Wiki

The main website of the Digital Classicist is a gateway containing links to the Digital Classicist

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

and other resources, including listings for seminars and conference panels. The seminar programmes include: abstract, slides (in pdf), audio (in mp3), and, video recordings from 2013. The project wiki contains lists of digital classics projects, software tools that have been made available for classicists, and a FAQ that solicits collaborative community advice on a range of topics from simple questions about, e.g., Greek fonts and

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

, word-processing and printing issues, to more advanced

Humanities Computing 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 ana ...

questions and project management advice. The wiki is hosted on the servers of the

Centre for Computing in the Humanities The Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) is an academic department and research centre in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King's College London. DDH counts amongst the "most visible" digital humanities centres worldwide. Its research acti ...

DCLP

The Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri (DCLP) is an online library that offers information about and transcriptions of Greek and Latin literary and subliterary

papyri Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

preserved on papyri, ceramic sherds (

ostraka An ostracon (Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeological or epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer to sherds or even small pieces of stone ...

), wooden tablets, and other portable media. DCLP is a joint project of the Institute for Papyrology at the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

and of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

Seminars and Publications

The members of the Digital Classicist community also report quite heavily on any conference and seminar activity that they take to reflect well on the project as a whole. Among the events cited are a series of summer seminars that have run each year since 2006 at the Institute of Classical Studies in London, and panels at the

Classical Association The Classical Association is a British learned society in the field of classics, aimed at developing classical study and promoting its importance in education. Constitution The association was founded on 19 December 1903, and its objects are def ...

Annual Conference in Birmingham 2007 Glasgow 2009, Durham 2011, and the Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference in September 2008. The Project was also among the sponsors of the Open Source Critical Editions workshop in 2006. In 2008 the

Digital Medievalist Digital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities. Histor ...

published a collaborative issue of Digital Classicist articles in memory of

. A collection of papers from the 2007 seminar series and conference panels have been published by Ashgate: ''Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity'' (Bodard and Mahony (eds) 2010). More recent papers have been collected together in a ''Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies'': Mahony and Dunn (eds) 2013''The Digital Classicist 2013'' (2013) London BICS Supplement-122 Institute of Classical Studies.See http://events.sas.ac.uk/icls/publications/1014

References

External links

The Stoa Consortium

The Digital Classicist wiki

Digitalclassicist discussion list
(@JISCmail)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
, King's College London
UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
University College London
''Digital Medievalist'' 4
a special joint issue with Digital Classicist
Diotima: Women and Gender in the Ancient World
{{University of Kentucky Projects established in 2005 King's College London University of Kentucky Research projects Digital humanities Educational projects MediaWiki websites Wiki communities Computing in classical studies Digital humanities projects