Digital Humanities Project in Classics

Elton Barker has recently joined the Faculty as a lecturer in Classics (from Oxford) and has brought with him the HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) project. He is Principle Investigator for HESTIA, working with Stefan Buzar (University of Birmingham), Chris Pelling (University of Oxford) and Leif Isaksen (University of Southampton).

HESTIA provides a new approach towards conceptions of space in the ancient world, supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Combining a variety of different methods, it examines the ways in which space is represented in Herodotus' History, in terms of places mentioned and geographic features described. It develops visual tools to capture the 'deep' topological structures of the text, extending beyond the usual two-dimensional Cartesian maps of the ancient world.

The project website is at: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/hestia/index.html. Before the end of the year the project team are planning to post some initial results, including a spatial database (with a user-friendly set of queries that can be asked of it) and various maps that it can generate. They are also looking at developing a 'bookline', (a timeline linked to a map showing how certain places/regions come in and out of focus in the literature over time).

For more about the project, listen to a presentation by Elton Barker on 31 July, which can be downloaded from http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2009.html along with the PowerPoint slides.

For more information about Digital Humantities projects in the Classics see The Digital Classicist website at http://www.digitalclassicist.org/. The Digital Classicist is a decentralised and international community of scholars and students interested in the application of innovative digital methods and technologies to research on the ancient world. The Digital Classicist is not core funded, and nor is it owned by any institution. The main purpose of this site is to offer a web-based hub for discussion, collaboration and communication.

Museums Blog - A directory of museum-related blogs

Museum Blogs is a directory of museum and museum-related blogs and aggregator. Like its companion site Museum Podcasts, the purpose of this site is to raise awareness and increase the authority of sites focusing on museum issues. At the time of writing there were 331 blogs included on the site.

The Directory
A moderated directory provides a central website for listings to museum and museum-related blogs.

The Blog
All of the posts are from the RSS feeds of the blogs included in the directory.

Policies
This site is run as a public service and encourages community participation. The site does not accept advertising.

Link:

Small grants for Roman research

The Roman Research Trust invites applications for its grants. This programme supports research projects in the archaeology of the Romano-British period, educational programmes such as museum exhibitions, conferences, summer schools and seminars and publications.

Minor and major grants may be awarded up to twice a year. Minor grants will not normally exceed £5,000 and will be awarded for a one year period with the possibility of renewal for up to two further years.

Deadlines: 15 April and 15 November annually

More information at:
http://rrt.classics.ox.ac.uk/grants.html

The Roman Research Trust was established as a British Registered Charity in January 1990 to support education and research in Romano-British Archaeology.

Small Grants from the Classical Association

The Classical Association awards in the region of £50,000 each year to classical projects and conferences, mainly in the UK. Past examples of awards have been in the range £250 to £30,000.

The Association will consider applications for:

• Subventions to summer schools and to institutions offering extra-mural courses in Greek, Latin and Classical Civilisation.
• Bursaries for teachers attending courses abroad, notably the British School at Athens Easter Course.
• Support of Greek and Latin reading competitions arranged by CA branches.
• Support of regional Greek or Roman days or of school conferences.
• Subventions to academic conferences particularly when of broad appeal and held in major centres, with a view especially to assisting students, teachers and scholars from East European and developing countries.

The Association prefers to give grants in the form of student or other bursaries, and does not normally subsidise the running costs of conferences.

The CA runs its own bursary scheme for students (undergraduate, graduate, PGCE) and teachers attending the annual CA Conference held in April each year. This has been widened to include subventions to individuals.

It is a condition of all grants awarded that the Classical Association's support be recognised in any literature and that a report be provided of how the funds were used, including final accounts where appropriate.

Decisions on grant applications are normally made by Council which meets at the start of April and in mid-November each year.

The deadline for applications for the next Council meeting is 20 March 2009.

More information on the Classical Association website:
http://www.classicalassociation.org/Grants/Grants.html