Melissa Terras

Melissa Terras is the Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh‘s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, leading digital aspects of research within CAHSS, and Director of Research in the new Edinburgh Futures Institute. Her research focuses on the use of computational techniques to enable research in the arts, humanities, and wider cultural heritage and information environment that would otherwise be impossible. With a background in Classical Art History and English Literature (MA, University of Glasgow), and Computing Science (MSc IT with distinction in Software and Systems, University of Glasgow), her doctorate (Engineering, University of Oxford) examined how to use image processing and machine learning to interpret and read deteriorated Ancient Roman texts. She is an Honorary Professor of Digital Humanities in UCL Department of Information Studies, where she was employed from 2003-2017, Directing UCL Centre for Digital Humanities from 2013. Books include “Image to Interpretation: An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts” (2006, Oxford University Press) and and “Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader” (Ashgate 2013) which has been translated into Russian and Chinese. She is a Trustee of the National Library of Scotland, serves on the Board of Curators of the University of Oxford Libraries. is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and Fellow of the British Computer Society.