Melissa Terras
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melissaterras.bsky.social
Melissa Terras
@melissaterras.bsky.social

Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Computers versus the past. Digital Humanities and somesuch, including CoSTAR network activities, Creative Informatics, and Transkribus. MBE FREng. .. more

Melissa Mhairi Terras is a British scholar of Digital Humanities. Since 2017, she has been Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh, and director of its Centre for Digital Scholarship. 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. 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. .. more

Computer science 34%
Art 23%

£56k to design the strategy, to figure out what the options are and what will be needed to cover it. Stage Zero…

This is an exciting project, led by @nebulousflynn.bsky.social, to safeguard access to the UK’s digital 3D heritage at risk through over-reliance on commercial and free-to-use platforms for storage and dissemination. I'm happy to be serving on the advisory board and looking forward to discussions.
Wikimedia UK has been awarded a grant of £56,198 from National Lottery Heritage Fund towards our ‘UK Heritage 3D Data at Risk: Developing a Strategy for Long Term Access & Storage’ project. The grant will help ensure future access to the UK’s 3D heritage data.

More info: tinyurl.com/3ma28psr

Reposted by Melissa Terras

Wikimedia UK has been awarded a grant of £56,198 from National Lottery Heritage Fund towards our ‘UK Heritage 3D Data at Risk: Developing a Strategy for Long Term Access & Storage’ project. The grant will help ensure future access to the UK’s 3D heritage data.

More info: tinyurl.com/3ma28psr

Reposted by Catriona Seth

Job Alert! DH postdoc at Edinburgh - Post-Doctoral Research Fellow to work on the AHRC-funded project "Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana", which will build a digital archive out of the recorded words of enslaved people. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPN147/p...
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Edinburgh
Explore an exciting academic career as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.
www.jobs.ac.uk

Over to Glasgow tonight to hang out at the launch of the Glasgow Library of Synthesised Sound. A fab community run space in an old converted school, supporting access to electronic instruments. It was quite the party! www.gloss.scot

All welcome! I'm so excited about this talk!
We are excited to welcome Dorothy Berry as the speaker for our 2025 annual lecture, "How Users Imagine Archival Research", on December 10th. Register now: https://edin.ac/4pfKrDp #EdCDCS Charing: Melissa Terras

Reposted by Melissa Terras

We are excited to welcome Dorothy Berry as the speaker for our 2025 annual lecture, "How Users Imagine Archival Research", on December 10th. Register now: https://edin.ac/4pfKrDp #EdCDCS Charing: Melissa Terras

Frosty walk this morning #edinburgh

Disappointed, yet again, by a UK wide UKRI initiative who say things like “Representation matters to us” and pledge “A 50-50 gender balance within the gender binary” for activities, then give out PhD studentships to a cohort of 6 men, and 1 woman. #everydaySexism

This. My kids are “Crappy-Digital Natives”.
Can I just complain about the fact that 12 year olds are now expected to be able to navigate half-broken, enshittified digital platforms just to do school? On a daily basis they are required to use a mishmash of absolute garbage software that would make *me* rage quit. This is now the norm?

Reposted by Melissa Terras

Can I just complain about the fact that 12 year olds are now expected to be able to navigate half-broken, enshittified digital platforms just to do school? On a daily basis they are required to use a mishmash of absolute garbage software that would make *me* rage quit. This is now the norm?

Cold but happy on the ucu picket today, dancing to an impromptu band. C- to Edinburgh Uni management with their lack of leadership, plans, or care.

We… scientifically calculated it?
a bald man is giving a peace sign and the word sure is behind him
ALT: a bald man is giving a peace sign and the word sure is behind him
media.tenor.com

Am proud of this stat… although let’s not pile our fragile historical texts that high! 😉
A total of 150 million document images have already been processed in Transkribus!

Stacked on top of each other, they would form an impressive 15-kilometre-high tower—almost double the height of Mount Everest. 🏔️

Heading home on the train to 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and there is snow on those hills!

Am looking for PhD students to supervise under this particular call! And v interested in Home student applicants - please share with any ambitious DH/LIS students you know who are on the technical side…
The call for PhD applications for the Centre for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing is live - deadline 7th January 2025! We have webinars for potential applicants to ask us questions and seek advice. www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student...

Reposted by Melissa Terras

A total of 150 million document images have already been processed in Transkribus!

Stacked on top of each other, they would form an impressive 15-kilometre-high tower—almost double the height of Mount Everest. 🏔️

Reposted by Melissa Terras

The call for PhD applications for the Centre for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing is live - deadline 7th January 2025! We have webinars for potential applicants to ask us questions and seek advice. www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student...
I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...
The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care?
The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity
www.cityam.com

Go for a walk…? I rarely have time to do anything more than that… if I have the time/an hour, it’s the local museum/art gallery!

Well let’s see what next week brings 😂

View from a hotel room, #Leicester #academicglamour. Did a PhD viva today. Home tomorrow… a lot of travel just now, but that’s my own fault! Always interesting to see what happens elsewhere…

Such a great project! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. We did a project like this with the London Library on the borrowing records of John Stuart Mill, which may be of interest, as we went on to data mine relationships, in case its of interest! academic.oup.com/dsh/article/...
Text mining Mill: Computationally detecting influence in the writings of John Stuart Mill from library records
Abstract. How can computational methods illuminate the relationship between a leading intellectual, and their lifetime library membership? We report here o
academic.oup.com
A lovely story of an archivist reaching out for religious community support to fully understand a holy book in the collection, and that community getting a wonderful experience in return.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Sikhs flock to see rare outing of ancient holy book in Edinburgh
The Guru Granth Sahib is so fragile it was taken to Edinburgh Gurdwara in a special convoy by curators for just a few hours.
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Melissa Terras

If you care about the future of University of Edinburgh, call or email your local MSP on Monday:

Monday, 17 November: Call your MSP. UCU has prepared a briefing here, but you can also simply call and tell your story. These cuts will affect the whole city.

www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/lobby-your-m...
Lobby Your MSP! — UCU Edinburgh
www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk

Time to go to the airport, after a fab few days in Turkey. Will miss seeing cats everywhere…

Thanks, I don't work in that space.

I have more pics! 😻

Yes quite bonkers, that sudden “fashionable” European style bit!

A day off, exploring Istanbul. Sun shone. Am most taken by these dog prints in a tile from c. 1650 in the Topkapi palace. And the tiles! And the mother of pearl inlays!