Our First Keynote Speakers Announced
We are extremely pleased to announce the Keynote Speakers that will make up our first Keynote session at Digital Past 2018.
Wednesday 7th February will see Simon Crutchley (Historic England), Helen Pike and Dean Veall (UCL) and Andreas Weber (University of Twente) presenting on a wide range of survey and interpretation projects.
Simon Crutchley is Remote Sensing Manager at Historic England, and, as a landscape archaeologist, has over 25 years of experience in mapping and interpreting archaeological and historical features from aerial imagery. In ‘”Looking backwards and forwards, up and down”: Changes in measuring and recording sites and landscapes at Historic England over the last ten years’ Simon will be providing a ten year retrospective look at the developments in LiDAR and terrestrial laser scanning. This will include developments in hardware, software, data management and dissemination as well as looking at the lessons learnt and where we are headed next.
Helen Pike is Public Programmer for UCL Museums with a particular interest in ensuring that all communities have access to, and engagement with, heritage collections and Dean Veall is Learning and Access Officer at the Grant Museum of Zoology, where his role includes using innovative technologies to engage the public with science and the natural world. As part of the UCL Grand Challenge of Transformative Technology, Helen and Dean ran events such as the ‘Visual Impairment Hackathon’ investigating how technologies could be used to create more accessible, inclusive and empowering museum experiences and ‘Robot Tours’ which tested how remote access technologies could open access to museums and their collections to people with motor disabilities and other impairments. In this presentation they will share their insights in experimenting with new digital technologies and tools that widen access to culture and heritage through theory and practice.
Dr Andreas Weber is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences at the University of Twente. With an expertise in the development of science and technology in society and digital heritage, Andreas will be presenting on Natural historical archives as digital challenge and opportunity. During the first half of the nineteenth century, unprecedented written and visual documentation took place of the flora and fauna of the Indonesian archipelago. Archived in museums across the Netherlands, Germany, England and France, these handwritten manuscripts and drawings have been digitised, but due to their nature remain relatively inaccessible to researchers and the public. The project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives has developed an advanced and user-friendly online service to search and network these digitized illustrated handwritten collections, and Andreas will present both a project overview and discuss the opportunities, pitfalls, and wider implications which the application of an (word) image recognition system and other digital techniques in the context of digitized illustrated handwritten collections.
05/12/2017