Historia Ludens: Conference on History and Gaming, 19 May 2017

Posted on behalf of Alexander von Lünen (to whom queries should be addressed):

University of Huddersfield
19 May 2017

This conference follows up on the workshop “Playing with History” that has been held in November 2015 in Huddersfield. Gaming and History is gaining more and more traction, either as means to “gamify” history education or museum experiences, or as computer games as prism into history like the popular History Respawned podcast series (http://www.historyrespawned.com/).

Besides discussing gamification or using (computer) games, we also want to explore gaming and playing in a broader historical-cultural sense. Can “playing” be used as category for historical scholarship, maybe alongside other categories such as gender, space or class? Historian Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens from 1938 looked at play and its importance for human culture. Can historians make similar cases for more specific histories? In recent publications historians have pointed to the connection between cities and play. Simon Sleight, for example, has worked on the history of childhood and urban history, i.e. young people appropriating public urban spaces for their ludic activities and their struggle with authorities over this. Archaeologists, as another example, have shown that much of the urban infrastructure of Ancient Rome was dedicated to games, playing and gambling, as it had such a big role in Roman life.

The conference will thus discuss terms like “gaming”, “playing” and “history” in broad terms. There are academic papers in the morning and round-table sessions in the afternoon for networking and demos.

Tickets (£10) are available via the University of Huddersfield web shop. Please note: there are travel/conference bursaries for postgraduate students available on request; please contact Dr Alexander von Lünen (a.f.vonlunen@hud.ac.uk) for details.

Full details and programme at https://hudddighum.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/historia-ludens-conference-on-history-and-gaming-19-may-2017/

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CFP: Cyborg Classics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Forwarded on behalf of Silvie Kilgallon (to whom enqueries should be addressed):

We are pleased to announce a one-day symposium, sponsored by BIRTHA (The Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts) to be held at the University of Bristol, on Friday July 7th 2017.

Keynote speakers:

  • Dr Kate Devlin (Goldsmiths)
  • Dr Genevieve Liveley (Bristol)
  • Dr Rae Muhlstock (NYU)

The aim of the day is to bring together researchers from different disciplines – scholars in Archaeology & Anthropology, Classics, English, History, and Theology as well as in AI, Robotics, Ethics, and Medicine – to share their work on automata, robots, and cyborgs. Ultimately, the aim is an edited volume and the development of further collaborative research projects.

Indicative key provocations include:

  • To what extent do myths and narratives about automata, robots, and cyborgs raise questions that are relevant to contemporary debates concerning robot, cyborg, and AI product innovation?
  • To what extent, and how, can contemporary debate concerning robot, cyborg, and AI product innovation rescript ancient myths and narratives about automata, robots, and cyborgs.
  • Can interdisciplinary dialogues between the ‘soft’ humanities and the ‘hard’ sciences of robotics and AI be developed? And to what benefit?
  • How might figures such as Pandora, Pygmalion’s statue, and Talos help inform current polarized debates concerning robot, cyborg, and AI ethics?
  • What are the predominant narrative scripts and frames that shape the public understanding of robotics and AI? How could these be re-coded?

We invite scholars working across the range of Classics and Ancient History (including Classical Reception) and across the Humanities more widely to submit expressions of interest and/or a title and abstract (of no more than 250 words) to the symposium coordinator, Silvie Kilgallon (silvie.kilgallon@bristol.ac.uk). PhD students are warmly encouraged to contribute. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is May 31st, 2017.

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Research Fellows: Latinization of the north-western provinces

Posted on behalf on Alex Mullen (to whom enquiries should be addressed):

I should like to draw your attention to the advertisement for 2 Research Fellows for the 5-year ERC project: the Latinization of the North-Western Provinces: Sociolinguistics, Epigraphy and Archaeology (LatinNow).

The RFs will be based at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, University of Oxford, and will start, at the earliest, in September 2017. The positions will be for 3 years, with the possibility of extension.

Although the RFs will be located in Oxford, their contracts will be with the project host, the University of Nottingham, so applications must be made via the Nottingham online system:

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/jobs/currentvacancies/ref/ART002017

Please note that the panel requires basic details to be filled in online and a CV and covering letter to be uploaded (apologies, the generic application system is not clear on what needs to be uploaded). The deadline for applications is the 14th April.

If you would like further information, please do not hesitate to contact the Principal Investigator, Dr Alex Mullen.

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Roman Society Summer Placements

The Roman Society is pleased to invite applications for its 2017 bursary scheme.  The placements may be held at the following museums / organisations:

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: http://www.ashmolean.org/

Roman Baths, Bath: http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/

British Museum, Department of Greece and Rome: http://www.britishmuseum.org/

British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals: http://www.britishmuseum.org/

Corbridge Roman Site: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/corbridge-roman-town-hadrians-wall/

The placement will involve supporting the curatorial team in their collections research for the upcoming re-interpretation project at Corbridge museum. The exact nature of the work will depend on the applicant’s interests and experience, and the stage of current work at the time of the placement.

Great North Museum, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: https://greatnorthmuseum.org.uk/

English Heritage, Properties Historians Team, London: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/

The successful candidate will have the opportunity to complete three different tasks: 1) historical research on an aspect of Roman history, including life in a Roman town, the history of Roman military installations and early-modern / modern literary responses to Roman sites; 2) the interpretation of historical material to the public, including the preparation of display panels, trails and reconstruction drawings; 3) shadowing a historian at project meetings and helping to prepare project documents. These examples are indicative and the exact of the nature of the placement programme will be determined by its timing, project requirements, and a discussion with the candidate.

Institute of Classical Studies: http://ics.sas.ac.uk/

This placement offers the opportunity to gain experience in digital classics research. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to design and implement a small, independent piece of work related to one of the Institute’s projects, for example: a database of persons or names related to a historical source or area; annotating geographical information in visual or textual resources; or library catalogue data related to digital publication. Advanced digital skills are not a requirement, but familiarity with basic tools such as spreadsheets and database tables would be an advantage.

  •  The dates of the placement may be determined by consultation between the successful candidates and institutions but are usually for 2-3 weeks during the summer vacation.
  • All Undergraduate and MA students are eligible to apply.
  • Up to eight bursaries of £250 will be offered as a contribution towards travel or living expenses.
  • Candidates should apply by letter setting out their reasons for wishing to undertake an internship and outlining any previous experience.  You should also provide the name and email address of a referee.
  • You may specify the Museum / organisation you would prefer to be based at, or submit an open application.
  • Queries and letters of application should be addressed to the Secretary, Dr Fiona Haarer, and sent by email by 30 April, 2017 to: office@romansociety.org
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Cataloguing Open Access Classics Serials

The Institute for Classical Studies is pleased to announce the appointment of Simona Stoyanova for one year as a new Research Fellow in Library and Information Science on the Cataloguing Open Access Classics Serials (COACS) project, funded by a development grant from the School of Advanced Study.

COACS will leverage various sites that list or index open access (OA) publications, especially journals and serials, in classics and ancient history, so as to produce a resource that subject libraries may use to automatically catalogue the publications and articles therein. The project is based in the ICS, supervised by the Reader in Digital Classics, Gabriel Bodard, and the Combined Library, with the support of Paul Jackson and Sue Willetts. Other digital librarians and scholars including Richard Gartner and Raphaële Mouren in the Warburg Institute; Patrick Burns and Tom Elliott from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (NYU); Charles Jones from Penn State; and Matteo Romanello from the German Archaeological Institute are providing further advice.

Major stages of work will include:

  1. Survey of AWOL: We shall assess the regularity of metadata in the open access journals listed at AWOL (which currently lists 1521 OA periodicals, containing a little over 50,000 articles), and estimate what proportion of these titles expose metadata in standard formats that would enable harvesting in a form amenable to import into library catalogues. A certain amount of iteration and even manual curation of data is likely to be necessary. The intermediate dataset will need to be updated and incremented over time, rather than overwritten entirely on each import.
  2. Intermediate data format: We will also decide on the intermediate format (containing MARC data), which in addition to being ingested by the Combined Library will be made available for use by other libraries (e.g. NYU Library and the German Archaeological Institute’s Zenon catalogue). The addition of catalogued OA serials and articles to the library catalogue will significantly contribute to the research practice of scholars and other library users, enabling new research outputs from the Institute and enhancing the open access policy of the School.
  3. Further OA indexes: Once the proof-of-concept is in place, and data is being harvested from AWOL (and tested that they update rather than overwriting or duplicating pre-existing titles), we shall experiment with harvesting similar data from other indexes of OA content, such as DOAJ, OLH, Persée, DialNet, TOCS-IN, and perhaps even institutional repositories.
  4. Publish open access software: All code for harvesting OA serials and articles, and for ingest by library catalogues will be made available through Github. This code will then be available for updating the intermediate data to take advantage of new titles that are added to AWOL and other resources, and new issues of serials that are already listed. This will enable reuse of our scripts and data by other libraries and similar institutions.

By the end of the pilot project, we will have: made available and documented the intermediate dataset and harvesting and ingest code; performed a test ingest of the data into the ICS library catalogue; engaged known (NYU, Zenon, BL) and newly discovered colleagues in potentially adding to and using this data; explored the possibility of seeking external funding to take this project further.

We consider this project to be a pilot for further work, for which we intend to seek external funding once a proof of concept is in place. We hope to be able to build on this first phase of work by: extending the methods to other disciplines, especially those covered by the other institute libraries in SAS; enabling the harvest of full-text from serials whose license permit it, for search and other textual research such as text-mining and natural language processing; disambiguating enhancing the internal and external bibliographical references to enable hyperlinks to primary and secondary sources where available.

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Yale University Library seeks Digital Scholarship Project Manager

Yale University offers exciting opportunities for achievement and growth in New Haven, Connecticut. Conveniently located between Boston and New York, New Haven is the creative capital of Connecticut with cultural resources that include two major art museums, a critically-acclaimed repertory theater, state-of-the-art concert hall, and world-renowned schools of Architecture, Art, Drama, and Music.

Position Focus: Yale University seeks a Project Manager (PM) who will be responsible for coordination and completion of projects for Digital Scholarship Services (DSS) in the Yale University Library. This position will oversee all aspects of digital scholarship project management by setting deadlines, assigning responsibilities, and monitoring and summarizing progress of projects. The PM will prepare reports for upper management regarding status of projects and be familiar with a variety of digital scholarship concepts, practices, and procedures. Relying on experience and judgment, the PM will plan and accomplish goals by performing a variety of tasks across a spectrum of technologies and digital services. A wide degree of creativity and latitude is expected. Reports to the Director of Digital Scholarship Services.
Continue reading

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CFP: Digital Textual Editions and Corpora

Digital Classics Association
Call for papers for the January 4-7, 2018 meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in Boston

“Digital Textual Editions and Corpora”

Organizer: Neil Coffee, University at Buffalo, SUNY ncoffee@buffalo.edu

The discovery, editing, and publication of classical texts has been a foundational activity in the study of antiquity. The creation of born-digital editions of classical texts and of digital textual corpora has led to a resurgence of interest in the curation and editing of texts, so that they can be made more broadly accessible online and enhanced with features only possible through digital representation. The aim of this panel is to inform the SCS membership and engage them in a discussion regarding the current state of the art in the curation and publication of digital editions and corpora, as well as likely future directions. Abstracts are invited in two complementary areas. Scholars with experience working with contemporary digital editions and corpora are invited to discuss their experience. This might involve creating a digital edition or corpus, or it might involve a research project that intensively engaged with one. Scholars who have set up digital corpora and/or editing environments, or who work on conventions or other software that underlie such corpora are invited to relate their experience as well. Papers can address completed work, but can also be devoted partly or entirely to ongoing work, problems, or challenges.

Anonymous abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent to digitalclassicsassociation@gmail.com, with identifying information in the email. Abstracts will be refereed anonymously in accordance with SCS regulations. Submitters should confirm in their emails that they are SCS members in good standing. Abstracts should follow the formatting guidelines of the instructions for individual abstracts on the SCS website. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is March 1, 2017.

SCS website version: https://goo.gl/m21JQG

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Digital Classicist London 2017 CFP

The Digital Classicist London seminar invites proposals with a focus on the needs of users/readers, for the summer 2017 season, which will run on Friday afternoons in June and July in the Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House, London.

We welcome proposals in any area of classics, including ancient history, archaeology and reception, that employ digital or other innovative and collaborative approaches to the study of the ancient world (including cultures beyond the Mediterranean). Researchers of all levels, including students and professional practitioners, are welcome, and we expect a diverse audience of philologists and historians, information scientists and digital humanists, graduate students and interested members of the public.

There is a budget to assist with travel to London (usually from within the UK, but we have occasionally been able to assist international presenters to attend).

To submit a paper, please email an abstract of up to 500 words as an attachment to gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk by March 19th, 2017.

The seminar is organized by Gabriel Bodard, Simon Mahony, Eleanor Robson, Simona Stoyanova and Valeria Vitale. For full details, and previous years’ programmes, see http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2017.html

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Classical Philology Goes Digital, University of Potsdam, February 16-17, 2017

Classical Philology Goes Digital. Working on Textual Phenomena of Ancient Texts
University of Potsdam, February 16-17, 2017

Organization: Karen Blaschka (Universität Potsdam) and Monica Berti (Universität Leipzig)
Funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung

Thursday, February 16, 2017
9.00
Welcome Address by the Vice Dean Prof. Dr. Johannes Haag
Opening (Monica Berti / Karen Blaschka)

I. DH-keynote-speakers (part I)
Chair: Neil Coffee (University at Buffalo)
9.30
Gregory R. Crane (Universität Leipzig/Tufts University), Greek, Latin and Digital Philology in a Global Age
10:10
Franz Fischer (CCeH / IDE Köln), Digital Philology and the (cr)apparatus

10.50
Coffee Break

Chair: Gregory R. Crane (Universität Leipzig/Tufts University)
11:10
Francesco Mambrini (DAI, Berlin), The Syntax of Similes. A Treebank-based Exploration of Simile in Greek Poetry
11:50
Monica Berti (Universität Leipzig), Documenting Text Reuse of Greek Fragmentary Authors
12.30
Break for lunch

II. Project presentations (part I)
Chair: Karen Blaschka (Universität Potsdam)
13.30
Maria Vasiloudi, Carl W. Brunschön (Universität des Saarlandes/BBAW Berlin), Iatrosophia-digital: Die Rezeption antiker medizinischer Texte in griechischen Iatrosophia-Handschriften vom 13. bis 19. Jh.
Marie Revellio (Zukunftskolleg Universität Konstanz), Citation Practices in Jerome’s Letters as Vestigia of Late Antique Identit Construction
14.50
Coffee Break Continue reading

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Digital Approaches and the Ancient World, BICS 59-2 (2016)

BICS 59-2 coverThe Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies is very happy to announce the publication of issue 59-2, the last issue of 2016, edited by Gabriel Bodard, Yanne Broux and Ségolène Tarte, on the theme of Digital Approaches and the Ancient World.

BICS is a print journal, published by Wiley-Blackwell, also available in electronic form to subscribers through their online library.

Section I, Near East, with articles by: J. Troy Samuels; Stéphane Polis & Vincent Razanajao.

Section II, History and Landscape, with articles by: Adam Rabinowitz et al.; Chiara Palladino; Elaine Sullivan.

Section III, Greek and Latin, with articles by: Neel Smith; Gloria Mugelli et al.; Monica Berti et al.; Justin A. Stover & Mike Kestermont.

Contents at Wiley Online Library: https://doi.org/10.1111/bics.2016.59.issue-2

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EpiDoc training workshop, London, April 2017

We invite applications to participate in a training workshop on digital editing of papyrological and epigraphic texts, at the Institute of Classical Studies, London, April 3–7, 2017. The workshop will be taught by Gabriel Bodard and Lucia Vannini (ICS) and Simona Stoyanova (KCL). There will be no charge for the workshop, but participants should arrange their own travel and accommodation.

EpiDoc: Ancient Documents in XML

EpiDoc (epidoc.sf.net) is a community of practice and guidance for using TEI XML for the encoding of inscriptions, papyri and other ancient texts. It has been used to publish digital projects including Inscriptions of Aphrodisias and Tripolitania, Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri, and EAGLE Europeana Project. The workshop will introduce participants to the basics of XML markup and give hands-on experience of tagging textual features and object descriptions, identifying and linking to external person and place authorities, and use of the online Papyrological Editor tool.

The workshop will assume knowledge of papyrology or epigraphy; Greek, Latin or another ancient language; and the Leiden Conventions. No technical skills are required, and scholars of all levels, from students to professors, are welcome. To apply, please email gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk with a brief description of your background and reason for application, by February 14, 2017.

(Revised to bring back deadline for applications to Feb 14th.)

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Sunoikisis Digital History and Archaeology, Fall 2016

The fall programme of the Sunoikisis Digital Classics course has just started, with online sessions via YouTube on Thursdays at 16h00 UK/11h00 New York. This semester, focussed on objects, space and heritage data, rus in parallel with courses taught at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London (ICS03), and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University (ISAW-GA-3024), and includes contributions from colleagues and students worldwide.

The full programme can be found on Github at SunoikisisDC, and the sessions will be streamed on our YouTube channel.

  1. Sep 29. Introduction: Object artefact script (Gabriel Bodard)
  2. Oct 6. 3D Imaging, Photogrammetry (Sebastian Heath)
  3. Oct 13. Geography 1: Gazetteers (Valeria Vitale, Usama Gad and Gabriel Bodard)
  4. Oct 20. 3D Modelling, Computer Aided Design (Valeria Vitale)
  5. Oct 27. Geography 2: Carto (Tom Elliott)
  6. Nov 3. Geography 3: GIS (Leif Isaksen)
  7. Nov 10. Ontologies and Data Modelling (Arianna Ciula and Charlotte Tupman)
  8. Nov 17. Data Structuring and Querying (Tom Elliott and Sebastian Heath)
  9. Nov 24. Data Visualization (Jonathan Blaney, Sarah Milligan, Jane Winters)
  10. Dec 1. Network Analysis (Silke Vanbeselaere and Greg Woolf)
  11. Dec 8. Crowdsourcing Heritage and Conservation (John Pearce)
  12. Dec 15. Historical sources (Monica Berti)

All are welcome to follow these sessions remotely (live or after the event). Please get in touch if you would like to get involved more directly with these or future Sunoikisis DC programmes.

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Digital Classicist Seminar Berlin 2016/17

We are delighted to announce that the final programme for this year’s Digital Classicist Seminar Berlin is now online. You can find it at <http://de.digitalclassicist.org/berlin/seminar2016> and below.

The seminar series will start on Oct. 18 with a keynote by Silvia Polla (TOPOI) entitled “Between Demography and Consumption: Digital and Quantitative approaches in the Mediterranean Surface Survey.”

Seminars take place on Tuesdays (starting at 17:00 c.t.) on a fortnightly basis at the TOPOI building Dahlem or at the DAI.

We would also like to draw your attention to the possibility for students to attend the seminar as part of their curriculum. The seminar is now part of the academic programme of the Freie Universität under the name “Digitale Methoden in den Altertumswissenschaften” (see the FU’s course catalog <http://www.fu-berlin.de/vv/de/lv/315967>).

The seminar is recognised with 5 credit points (ECTS): this requires the attendance of the seminars and a 15 minute poster presentation on one of the topics covered by the seminar series. The poster presentations can be either in English or German and will take place after the end of the seminars on 18.4.2017 in the TOPOI building Dahlem.

Programme

18.10.2016
Silvia Polla (TOPOI)
“Between Demography and Consumption: Digital and Quantitative approaches in the Mediterranean Surface Survey”

1.11.2016
Undine Lieberwirth & Axel Gering (TOPOI)
“3D GIS in archaeology – a micro-scale analysis”

15.11.2016
Duncan Keenan-Jones (Glasgow)
“Digital Experimental Archaeology: Hero of Alexandria and his Automata in CAD”

29.11.2016
Chiara Palladino & Tariq Youssef (Leipzig)
“iAligner: a tool for syntax-based intra-language text alignment”

13.12.2016
Christian Prager (Bonn)
“Of Codes, Glyphs and Kings: Tasks, Limits and Approaches in the Encoding of Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions”

10.1.2017
Wolfgang Schmidle et al. (DAI)
“chronOntology: A time gazetteer with principles”

24.1.2017
Nathan Gibson (Vanderbilt)
“Toward a Cyberinfrastructure for Syriac Literature: Mapping a Text Corpus using TEI and RDF”

7.2.2017
Katherine Crawford (Southampton)
“In the Footsteps of the Gods: network approach to modeling Roman Religious Processions”

21.2.2017
Aline Deicke (Mainz)
“From E19 to MATCH and MERGE. Mapping the CIDOC CRM to graph databases as an environment for archaeological network research”

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The Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (DFHG) is online

The Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (DFHG) is a project directed by Monica Berti at the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Leipzig for producing the digital version of the five volumes of the Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (FHG) edited by Karl Müller in the 19th century.

The FHG consists of a survey of excerpts from many different sources pertaining to more than 600 Greek fragmentary authors. Excluding the first volume, authors are chronologically distributed and cover a period of time from the 6th century BC through the 7th century CE. Fragments are numbered sequentially and arranged according to works and book numbers, when these pieces of information are available in the source texts preserving the fragments. Every Greek fragment is translated or summarized into Latin.

The digital version of FHG vol. 1 is now available online with search functionalities and citation extraction (CTS and CITE URNs). It collects the fragments of 6th-4th century authors (Hecataeus of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, Xanthus of Lydia, Hellanicus of Lesbos, Pherecydes of Athens, Acusilaus of Argos, Ephorus of Cuma, Theopompus of Chius, and Phylarchus), Apollodorus of Athens (with fragments of the Bibliotheca), historians of Sicily (Antiochus of Syracuse, Philistus of Syracuse, Timaeus of Tauromenius), and the Atthidographers (Clidemus, Phanodemus, Androtio, Demo, Philochorus, and Ister).

DFHG

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Book launch invitation: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange & Public Engagement

We would like to invite you to a launch event on June 10th, with the Institute of Classical Studies and Ubiquity Press, for the recently published volume:

Bodard G. & Romanello M. 2016. Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange & Public Engagement. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bat

A limited number of print copies of the book will be available to view and purchase, and several authors will be present to discuss their chapters and the work as a whole. Wine and refreshments will be provided.

18:00 Friday June 10, 2016
2nd floor lobby, south block, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU
(Note this event follows the Digital Classicist seminar, 16:30 room 234, see digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2016.html)

Please also feel free to display or circulate the attached poster.

We hope to see many of you there!

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