Melissa Terras

Background

About Melissa Terras

I am the Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage within Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, UK. I am Directing Creative Informatics, the Edinburgh based AHRC Creative Cluster (2018-2024) supporting innovation in creative and cultural contexts, and a founding Director of Transkribus, the AI-powered platform for text recognition of historical documents. I am the University of Edinburgh lead for CoSTAR (UK Government’s Convergent Screen Technologies and performance in Realtime) programme (2023-29), which involves being Co-Director of the CoSTAR Realtime Lab (with Abertay), and Director of New Forms of Data for the CoSTAR Foresight Lab (with Goldsmiths, Loughborough, and BFI). With a background in Classical Art History and English Literature (MA, University of Glasgow), and Computing Science (MSc IT with distinction in Software and Systems, University of Glasgow), my doctorate (Engineering, University of Oxford) examined how to use image processing and machine learning to interpret and read deteriorated Ancient Roman texts. My research contributions are in the area of digitisation of cultural heritage, covering three main areas: advanced digitisation techniques and approaches; understanding large-scale digitisation in the cultural heritage sector and how it can be best deployed for and by users as well as by institutions; and utilising the results of digitisation to undertake novel research and innovative projects in the arts and humanities. Recently, I have been working on the use of advanced technology in the cultural and creative industries, particularly how we can support innovation in this area. I previously directed UCL Centre for Digital Humanities in UCL Department of Information Studies, where she was employed from 2003-2017, being Vice-Dean Research of UCL Faculty of Arts and Humanities (2014-2017). At Edinburgh, I am Founding Director of the Centre for Data, Culture and Society, and was Director of Research for the Edinburgh Futures Institute (2018-2023). I am an Expert Advisor to the UK Government’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I have been Co-I or PI of over £50m of research funding, authored over 150 academic papers, and books include “Image to Interpretation: An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts” (2006, Oxford University Press), “Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader” (Ashgate 2013), and “Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature"(Cambridge University Press 2018).