Erasmus+ BIP Intensive ENCODE: Digital Competences in Ancient Writing Cultures (in presence week)

Posted on 2025-05-14 by Alice Bencivenni

From May 19 to 23, the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Cultural Industries of the University of Parma, will host the final Spring School of the Erasmus+ BIP “Intensive ENCODE: Digital Competences in Ancient Writing Cultures”.

The Spring School, which will bring around 60 students from 10 European universities to Parma, aims to train students and researchers in the rapidly evolving field of Digital Humanities and AI. The goal is to prepare, with the contribution of about 20 Italian and international experts, professionals capable of using and creating new digital resources for the study, conservation, and dissemination of ancient written artifacts in languages and writing systems of the ancient Mediterranean area.

The Blended Intensive Programme and the Spring School that marks its culmination are coordinated by Cristina Carusi (University of Parma) and directed by Cristina Carusi with Alice Bencivenni (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna), Federico Aurora(University of Oslo), and Holger Essler (Julius Maximilian Universität Würzburg).

Online participation in conferences on Monday, Thursday and Friday is open to anyone who is interested. Links are provided below.

Monday May 19, 2025
Dipartimento di Discipline Umanistiche, Sociali e delle Imprese Culturali Via d’Azeglio 85, Aula B

Teams link
9:00am-9:30am Welcome
9:30am-10:00am Massimo Magnani, Cristina Carusi (Università di Parma) Institutional greetings
10:00am-11:00am Monica Berti (Universität Leipzig) Detecting and Extracting Named Entities from Epigraphic and Papyrological Texts

11:00am-11:30am Coffee Break (Aula H)

11:30am-12:30pm Franziska Naether (Universität Leipzig) – Online Digital Egyptology Projects / The Digital Rosetta Stone Project
12:30pm-01:00pm Discussion

01:00pm-03:00pm Lunch break

03:00pm-04:00pm Chiara Zanchi (Università di Pavia) Wordnets and Ancient Languages: Challenges, Insights, and an LLM-Powered Case Study
04:00pm-05:00pm Edward Ross (University of Reading) Ethics and Efficacy: Teaching and Learning Ancient Greek and Latin with Generative AI

05:00pm-05:30pm Break

05:30pm-06:30pm Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello (Universität Basel) – Online Digital Palaeography of Greek Papyri
06:30pm-7:00pm Discussion

Thursday May 22, 2025
Dipartimento di Discipline Umanistiche, Sociali e delle Imprese Culturali Via d’Azeglio 85, Aula B

Teams link
9:30am-10:30am Elina Boeva (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski) TELAMON, AIAX and their offspring – adapting a tool and workflow for multiple purposes

10:30am-11:00am Coffee Break (Aula F)

11:00am-12:00pm Francesco Mambrini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) Linguistic Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies for ancient languages
12:00pm-01:00pm Francesca Dell’Oro (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna) Encoding linguistic information from Greek and Latin inscriptions with a focus on semantics (anthroponomastics and modality)
01:00pm-01:30pm Discussion

Friday May 23, 2025
Dipartimento di Discipline Umanistiche, Sociali e delle Imprese Culturali Via d’Azeglio 85, Aula B

Teams link
9:00am-10:00am Kristiyan Simeonov (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski) Front-End Data Processing and Visualization for Digital Scholarship
10:00am-11:00am Jérôme Mairat (University of Oxford) – Online EpiDoc-based and AI-aided edition of coins (RPC Project)

11:00am-11:30am Coffee Break (Aula F)

11:30am-12:30pm Pietro Liuzzo (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute) Metrica – Reuse and Cooperation in Digital Epigraphy

12:30pm-02:30pm Lunch break

02:30pm-03:30pm Daniele Fusi (Universität Stuttgart) Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: A Modular Solution to Create Complex Resources
03:30pm-4:00pm Discussion

Full programme available here: https://site.unibo.it/encode/it/agenda/erasmus-bip-intensive-encode-digital-competences-in-ancient-writing-cultures-in-presence-week

and here: https://dusic.unipr.it/notizie/19-23-maggio-spring-school-intensive-encode-digital-competences-ancient-writing-cultures

 

 

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EpiDoc and Digital Epigraphy workshop, TCD & Maynooth (May 26–28, 2025)

Posted on 2025-05-09 by Gabriel Bodard

EpiDoc and Digital Epigraphy Workshop

Mon, 26 May 2025 10:00 – Wed, 28 May 2025 17:00

Trinity College Dublin (Monday) and Maynooth University (Tuesday & Wednesday)

This three-day, in-person workshop, co-hosted by the EMISoS project at Maynooth University and the Department of Classics at TCD, introduces several digital approaches to the study of epigraphy—reading and publishing historical texts inscribed on stone or other durable materials, and recording the objects on which they are inscribed.

We will discuss and have the opportunity to practice two advanced imaging techniques: photogrammetry and reflectance transformation imaging, both of which use photography to capture 3D and other surface information of heritage objects. We will also apply the encoding scheme EpiDoc (an implementation of TEI XML) to record the text and object description and history of inscriptions in Old Irish, Latin, Greek, Egyptian and other ancient languages.

The workshop is taught by Gabriel Bodard (London), Megan Kasten (Glasgow), Christine Morris (Trinity), Patricia O’Connor (Maynooth) and Nora White (Maynooth), and includes keynote lectures by Charlotte Roueché (King’s College London) and Pádraic Moran (University of Galway).

Free but booking required: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/epidoc-and-digital-epigraphy-workshop-tickets-1295614220009

Full programme available at: https://ahi.maynoothuniversity.ie/mind-material-middle-ages/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Programme.pdf

(Both keynotes open to all: no booking required.)

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Collaborative Doctoral Partnership studentship – Decoding the Vindolanda tablets (Nottingham/British Museum)

Posted on 2025-05-02 by Gabriel Bodard

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship – Decoding the Vindolanda tablets: Generative AI to reassemble, read and restore Roman handwritten texts with The British museum and University of Nottingham

Application Deadline: 2nd June 2025, 17.00

Interviews will take place online on 26th June 2025.

The British Museum and the University of Nottingham are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from October 2025 under the AHRC’s  Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme.

The project will test generative AI on a series of tasks aimed at recovering more of the texts of the Vindolanda tablets, including handwritten text recognition, reassembly of fragments, disentangling of palimpsest texts and restoration of missing sections.

This project will be jointly supervised by Professor Alex Mullen (University of Nottingham), Dr Richard Hobbs (British Museum) and Dr Kai Xu (University of Nottingham), and the student will be expected to spend time at both the University of Nottingham and the British Museum, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.

Full details, and to apply: https://jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=ARTS124

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New Books on Epigraphy and History of Ancient South Arabia

Posted on 2025-04-08 by giuliabuono

Recent publications by Mounir Arbach and Irene Rossi in the Arabia Antica series provide new contributions to the study of Ancient South Arabian history and epigraphy:

 

The City-States of the Jawf at the Dawn of Ancient South Arabian History (8th–6th centuries BCE)

M. Arbach & I. Rossi. 3 vols., 2022, pp. 242 + 500 + 144, Arabia Antica 17, Rome: «L’Erma» di Bretschneider

Volume I presents a historical synthesis; Volume II gathers the corpus of inscriptions, providing a philological edition; Volume III provides an index of lexical and onomastic items from the texts.

 

An Onomastic Index of the Minaic Inscriptions (6th–1st centuries BCE)

M. Arbach & I. Rossi, 2024, 218 pp., Arabia Antica 18, Rome: «L’Erma» di Bretschneider

An updated and systematic index of names attested in the corpus of Minaic inscriptions, offering a key resource for researchers working on Ancient South Arabian – and more broadly Semitic – onomastics and epigraphy.

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Text, Medium, and Layout

Posted on 2025-04-05 by Alice Bencivenni

Friday, 11 April 2025, 4 p.m. CET (and online), SALA STEMMI, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo della Carovana, Piazza dei Cavalieri, 7 PISA

Launch of the volume:

D. Amendola,, C.Carusi, F. Maltomini, E. Rosamilia, TEXT, LAYOUT, AND MEDIUM: Documents from the Greco-Roman World between Epigraphy and Papyrology, Firenze 2024

Introduction by:

Stefania De Vido – Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia e Istituto Italiano per la Storia Antica

Anna Magnetto – Scuola Normale Superiore

Fabrizio Oppedisano – Scuola Normale Superiore

Remarks by:

Lucia Criscuolo – Alma Mater Università di Bologna

Michele Faraguna – Università di Milano Statale

The editors will be present:

Davide Amendola – Scuola Superiore Meridionale

Cristina Carusi – Università degli Studi di Parma

Francesca Maltomini – Università degli Studi di Firenze

Emilio Rosamilia – Università degli Studi di Perugia

More information at: https://www.sns.it/it/evento/text-layout-and-medium

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First issue of Athīrat: Journal of Ancient Arabia

Posted on 2025-04-02 by giuliabuono

The inaugural issue of Athīrat: Journal of Ancient Arabia has just been published, under the title “Cultural and Epigraphic Studies on Pre-Islamic Arabia”.

Athīrat is a newly launched, double-blind peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of Ancient Arabia. It is published by the Hassan bin Mohammed Center for Historical Studies (HBMHC) in collaboration with Brill, and welcomes contributions in fields such as epigraphy, archaeology, linguistics, and history across the Arabian Peninsula.

For full contents, see here.

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Epigraphy.info Workshop IX, Aarhus (2-4/4/25): Final Programme and Registration

Posted on 2025-02-11 by davideibeck

The final programme of the 9th Epigraphy.info Workshop, which will take place in Aarhus from April 2nd to 4th 2025, is now online and available here.

Below the programme, you will find a registration form which you need to fill in if you would like to participate.

If you would like to be updated via our mailing list, feel free to join us as a member! The Communication Working Group of Epigraphy.info will organise an online meet-up event a few weeks before the workshop. This virtual event is dedicated especially to new members and people interested in participating to the workshop and/or joining the community.

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CfP: Epigraphy and Mobility (Coimbra, 15-18 July 2025)

Posted on 2025-01-27 by Gabriel Bodard

CfP: Epigraphy and Mobility: Understanding Patterns of Identity and Migration through Inscriptions in Ancient Societies
at the 16th Celtic Conference in Classics (15-18 July 2025, University of Coimbra)

We welcome submissions from scholars at every career stage by Thursday, 20 February 2025.

Template to submit your abstract is available here: https://www.uc.pt/cech/16-ccc/calls/call-for-papers/

The epigraphic medium represents a source of direct information on issues of mobility and migration in the ancient world. Inscriptions are indeed a well attested mode of communication through a wide geographical and chronologic range, providing us with a privileged viewpoint on the interaction between different writing cultures. The issues of mobility that will be explored in the proposed panel entail the circulation of individual, or groups of individuals, and of material and immaterial goods either within the same community, or across different communities and countries, for economic, social, cultural, gendered, political and religious reasons. In this scenario, private and public inscriptions, both in prose and in verses, provide a window into modes of representation and self-representation of the actors involved in dynamics of connection and transition in antiquity.

This panel welcomes attempts to investigate these dynamics in inscriptions from the Greek and Roman worlds, including provinces and colonies, in the Near East and in traditionally marginalized geographical contexts. Phenomena of mobility that shed light on cultural contacts between Greek – Roman communities and indigenous cultures will be also addressed and examined. Ethnographic and gender perspectives are among the possible angles through which inscriptions can inform our understanding of ancient processes of integration, mobility and exchange. Possible approaches to the themes of the panel include new methodologies (e.g., cognitive humanities, data mining, geospatial technologies, including GIS applications and web mapping, social network analysis) alongside more traditional historical, prosopographical and textual analysis approaches.

Extended version of this call is available at https://www.uc.pt/site/assets/files/1937571/16ccc_cfpapers_epigraphy_and_mobility-understanding_patterns_of_identity_and_migration_through_inscriptions_in_ancient_socie.pdf

Please send a title and an abstract of 300 words, along with a brief scholarly biography, to Federica Scicolone (f.scicolone@ssmeridionale.it) and Roberto Melfi (robertodomenico.melfi@unina.it) by Thursday, 20 February 2025.

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Studying Greek Inscriptions on Paros (June 22 – July 5, 2025)

Posted on 2025-01-24 by Gabriel Bodard

The Epigraphy of the Aegean Islands:
Studying Greek Inscriptions on Paros
June 22 – July 5, 2025

This course aims at introducing the participants to the study of Greek inscriptions from the Archaic Period to the Roman times with an emphasis on the inscriptions of the Aegean Islands. Students will have the opportunity to be taught by world experts in the field and to become familiar with the nature of epigraphic documents. They will be introduced to the expertise required in the field of Greek epigraphy and will understand how inscriptions are invaluable documents for the knowledge of Ancient History.

More about the program: https://www.herc.gr/the-epigraphy-of-the-aegean-islands-paros/

The Hellenic Education & Research Center (HERC) was established in 2006 and is dedicated to the promotion of Hellenic Studies with an emphasis on the Classics.
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Lucia Criscuolo, Egitto ellenistico e altri scritti di storia, economia, istituzioni

Posted on 2024-12-13 by Alice Bencivenni

Today, in Bologna, aula II via Zamboni 38 and online (17.30 CET)

Michele Faraguna, Alessandro Cristofori, and Carla Salvaterra will present and discuss the book:

Lucia Criscuolo, Egitto ellenistico e altri scritti di storia, economia, istituzioni, a cura di A. Bencivenni, M.E. De Luna, M. Mari, F. Reiter, Berlin-Boston : De Gruyter  2023 [DOI: 10.1515/9783111354262].

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LatinNOW publications

Posted on 2024-12-06 by Gabriel Bodard

Alex Mullen’s LatinNow project (Latinization of the north-western Roman provinces: sociolinguistics, epigraphy and archaeology) have now produced three edited volumes of work on Latinization, literacy and multilingualism, all open access (and in print from OUP):

Alex adds:

The accompanying data for the newest volume can be found at https://gis.latinnow.eu/. We’d like to thank Scott Vanderbilt for his invaluable post-project work on the data for the GIS, which has been very much appreciated.

These and the other books and digital publications of the LatinNOW project are discussed in more detail at https://latinnow.eu/2023/12/05/latinnow-books/.

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Seminario Avanzato di Epigrafia Greca 2025 (SAEG IX) – Programma

Posted on 2024-12-02 by Alice Bencivenni

È stato pubblicato il programma definitivo del SAEG IX, che si svolgerà a Roma dall’8 al 10 gennaio 2025.

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