The Stoa: a Review for Digital Classics

New online catalogue of Roman coins at the British Museum.

A catalogue of the Roman Republican Coins in the British Museum, with descriptions and chronology based on M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (1974) – this catalogue brings together over 12,000 coins. It aims to provide an introduction to the coinage, the history of the Museum collection and an aid to the identification of coin types.

Entries are generated directly from our collection database and might change as Museum curators discover more about the objects. This format aims to provide a ‘living’ catalogue so its contents can be adapted to reflect current research.

Christopher Blackwell is with a team now at Lichfield scanning St Chad’s Gospel, and a Wycliffe Bible too. He’s blogging the experience:

https://nobleswineherd.blogspot.com/2010/06/litchfield.html

And yes, the images will be released under a Creative Commons license.

Posted on behalf of Dhananjay Jagannathan:

In response to a recent call from a philosopher for better translations of ancient works online for the sake of his students (https://blog.davidhildebrand.org/2010/06/what-to-do-about-old-translations.html), I decided to launch a digital humanities project which will, I hope, result in a high-quality, freely available translation of Plato’s Protagoras (probably under a Creative Commons license). The basic principle is this: every day for a few months, I will post roughly a page of the dialogue on a blog (https://openprotagoras.wordpress.com/), side by side in Greek, in my own translation, and in Jowett’s classic 1871 translation that appears commonly online. I’ve invited readers to comment and offer suggestions to improve the translation. My goal is to communicate Plato in English the way readers of his would have interpreted his Greek, aiming to capture his range of styles (colloquial conversation on the street, philosophical debate, rhetorical displays, poetic analysis, and so on) in a contemporary idiom. The nature of the project requires a wide readership for its success, so I hope you will pass this along.

Best wishes,
Dhananjay Jagannathan
Balliol College
University of Oxford

Are there other, similar initiatives underway? It seems timely.

Closing date for applications: July 2, 2010.

The two lectureships will be joint appointments between the Department of Digital Humanities (formerly CCH) and the Centre for Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Demonstrated research interests across both areas are a requirement.

Further particulars and application information.

Posted on behalf of Carl Vogel at TCD – not a position in classics, but could be interesting for digital classicist types.

[Apologies for multiple postings; please circulate as appropriate.]

2 Phd Positions involving speech and text analysis are open within TCD.

https://www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/InnovationBursaries/

The bursaries include payment of fees, some research costs, and a stipend of 16K per annum. The funding covers four years of study within a structured PhD program.  This funding is equivalent to that provided by IRCSET awards.

Position 1: Speaking the 1641 Depositions

This innovative project under the theme of “Digital Humanities and Sustainable Records” will attract candidates who are interested in independent and advanced research linking speech synthesis and important historical documents. It will involve application of advanced linguistic and statistical methods, using the latest tools and technologies, for the analysis and rendering into speech of large bodies of annotated historical text. The project will last for four years and research costs, a stipend, and coverage of fees, etc., will be offered. Successful applicants will have a background in either history or computing. They will have keen analytical skills and will join a small team of researchers with similar interests in the way
people speak and present information. They will be especially interested in expressing personality through speech synthesis, and in attempting to render historical texts in order to express character through the synthesised voices.

Further details:
https://www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/InnovationBursaries/
Apply for course:  www.pac.ie/tcd (code — TRB01)

Position 2: Technology for harmonising interpersonal communication

We explore how contemporary modes of interaction, typically at a distance via electronic devices, can be supplemented to support the sorts of information flow and inference that evolution has endowed humans sensitivity to in face-to-face communications. The research entails that various prototype applications be constructed, deployed and analyzed. A successful candidate will have demonstrable expertise in computer programming, preferably with experience of end-user application delivery. The candidate will be engaged in the delivery of software alongside performance of quantitative and qualitative analysis of linguistic data. The background research topic is in discerning sentiment and other non-propositional content of textual communications (such as text messages) and projecting the same through appropriate vocal synthesis. Prior expertise in text and dialogue analysis as well as speech synthesis will be an advantage. Candidates should be comfortable with computational theoretical frameworks for syntax and formal semantics, as well as statistically oriented approaches to language analysis.

Further details:
https://www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/InnovationBursaries/
Apply for course: www.pac.ie/tcd (code — TRB08)

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Closing date for applications:
Friday 9th April 2010

Applications should be made online through www.pac.ie/tcd