DH COP *UoR only* – Virtual Ancient Rome

Community of Practice

Please note, this event is a meeting of the Digital Humanities Community of Practice, which is open to University of Reading researchers only. If you are interested in any of the presentations, please contact the speakers directly (details included below).

The COP is a space for colleagues with an interest in Digital Humanities to come together, share ideas and expertise, and discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by digital research and engagement with Digital Humanities as a discipline.

It is open to all researchers, staff, and PGRs from any subject – we welcome interdisciplinary collaboration!

Within the COP, you will be able to introduce yourself, share your research, and have access to information about funding opportunities, support, and events. Read more here.

Meeting details

This term’s meeting of the Digital Humanities Community of Practice will be taking place online, on Tuesday 31 May (11:30-13:00).

The meeting will include a presentation by Matthew Nicholls (Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford and Visiting Professor, UoR Classics) on his 3D model of Ancient Rome. An abstract of the presentation is below.

The meeting will be taking place online in order to ensure ongoing accessibility for those especially vulnerable to Covid-19. From the autumn term, we hope to hold a mixture of online and hybrid events so that colleagues can network in person. The invite for this meeting, which you can add to your calendar, will be posted in the Teams channel.

You are welcome to join the Community of Practice via our MS Teams channel. (This link will take you to the Teams channel. If you are not already a member, you will be presented with a dialogue box that says ‘Join’. Click this to send a request, which will be approved if you are a member of the University of Reading. If you are already a member of the Team, this link just takes you directly to the ‘General’ channel.)

If you have any questions please contact the DH Academic Champion, Mara Oliva (m.oliva@reading.ac.uk).

Programme

Date and time: 31 May 2022, 11:30-13:00 – MS Teams

11:30-11:40: Welcome and DH Hub news – Mara Oliva (Academic Champion)

11:40-11:45: Introduction to 3D visualisations

11:45-12:30: Presentation: 3D model of Ancient Rome – Matthew Nicholls

12:35-12:55: Q&A

12:55-13:00: Next COP and Close

Abstract: ‘3D model of Ancient Rome’

Matthew Nicholls’ large scale 3D model of ancient Rome will be familiar to some Reading colleagues, not least those who have cause to walk down the Classics corridor in the Morley Building. This project grew initially out of research on ancient Roman buildings, and developed as a teaching innovation. Its ongoing uses include a public-facing online course (MOOC) which has now been taken by over 62,000 people and has generated significant revenue and course applications at Reading; there are also research uses and ‘impactful’ licensing to television documentaries, software firms, games studios, and others. The model itself and a Part 3 module deriving from it won a Guardian/HEA teaching innovation award, and were the basis of a successful application for a National Teaching Fellowship and two REF impact case studies. It was largely created in free or low-cost consumer software, without specialist training.

This talk will look at the creation of the digital model: the software and processes used to create it, the challenges and benefits of 3D visualisation of the ancient past, and some of its uses and applications.

Reading materials

• Virtual Rome website
• Book chapter: Nicholls, M. (2019), ‘Sketchup and digital modelling for Classics’, in B. Natoli and S. Hunt (eds.) Teaching Classics with Technology, Bloomsbury, London, pp. 131-144. [Available via the University of Reading’s repository, CentAUR]
• Article: Nicholls, M. (2016), ‘Digital visualisation in Classics teaching and beyond’, Journal of Classics Teaching 17 (33), pp. 27-30. [Available via the University of Reading’s repository, CentAUR]

If you are not a member of UoR and are interested in this presentation, please contact Matthew Nicholls.