Dr Gabriel Bodard

Contact details

Name:
Dr Gabriel Bodard
Qualifications:
PhD
Position:
Reader in Digital Classics
Institute:
Institute of Classical Studies
Location:
Institute of Classical Studies and Digital Humanities Research Hub School of Advanced Study University of London Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU
Phone:
+44 (0)207 862 8752
Email address:
gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk
Website:
https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/User:GabrielBodard

Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:
Ancient History, Archaeology, Classics, Digital resources, Digitisation
Research keywords:
Ancient People, Epigraphy, Papyrology, Digital Editing, Ancient Geography
Regions:
Africa, Europe
Summary of research interests and expertise:

Gabriel Bodard works in the field of digital classics, applying approaches, technologies and quantitative methods of digital humanities to the study of the ancient world. His main interests in classics include ancient (especially handwritten) texts, including curse tablets and magic papyri, the Greek heritage of North Africa. His digital expertise includes the encoding and publication of epigraphic and papyrological documents in digital form, and the capture and sharing of data about ancient people and places through Linked Open Data and the semantic web. He organizes the Digital Classicist seminar in London, and teaches classes and workshops on digital methods for classicists and archaeologists nationally and internationally. He has edited several volumes of essays in the area of digital classics, and is the author of guidelines for encoding ancient texts (EpiDoc) and sharing person databases (SNAP:DRGN).

Languages:
Spoken Written
French Fluent Fluent
Spanish Good Good
Latin - Intermediate
Publication Details

Related publications/articles:

Date Details
01-Jan-2021 Linked Open Data for Ancient Names and People

Articles

Bodard, Gabriel (2021). Linked Open Data for Ancient Names and People. In Linked Open Data for the Ancient Mediterranean: Structures, Practices, Prospects (edd. Bond, Dilley, Horne). ISAW Papers 20. ISSN 2164-1471.

01-Jan-2021 Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania

Monographs

Roueché, Charlotte, Caroline Barron, Gabriel Bodard, Joyce M. Reynolds, Irene Vagionakis and others (2021). Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania. Society for Libyan Studies. ISBN 978-1-912466-25-2.

01-Jan-2020 Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica

Monographs

Reynolds, Joyce M., Charlotte M. Roueché & Gabriel Bodard (2020). Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica. Society for Libyan Studies. ISBN 978-1-912466-22-1.

01-Jan-2020 Publication, Testing and Visualization with EFES: A tool for all stages of the EpiDoc editing process

Journal articles

Bodard, Gabriel and Polina Yordanova, 2020. Publication, Testing and Visualization with EFES: A tool for all stages of the EpiDoc editing processStudia Digitalia Universitatis Babe?-Bolyai 65 (1), pp. 17–35. ISSN 2559-6721.

01-Jan-2017 Standards for Networking Ancient Person-data: Digital approaches to problems in prosopographical space

Articles

“Standards for Networking Ancient Person-data: Digital approaches to problems in prosopographical space.” (with Hugh Cayless, Mark Depauw, Leif Isaksen, K. Faith Lawrence, Sebastian Rahtz†). Digital Classics Online 3.2 (2017). Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.11588/dco.2017.0.37975

01-Dec-2016 Digital Approaches to the Ancient World

Edited Book

Digital Approaches to the Ancient World, with Yanne Broux and Ségolène Tarte. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 59-2 (December 2016). Available: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bics.2016.59.issue-2/issuetoc (currently Open Access)

01-Dec-2016 Epigraphers and Encoders: Strategies for Teaching and Learning Digital Epigraphy

Articles

"Epigraphers and Encoders: Strategies for Teaching and Learning Digital Epigraphy" (with Simona Stoyanova) in Bodard/Romanello (eds.) Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange & Public Engagement. (London: Ubiquity Press, 2016). Pp. 51–68. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bat.d

01-Jul-2016 Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement

Edited Book

Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement, with Matteo Romanello. (Ubiquity Press, 2016). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bat (Open Access)

01-Jan-2014 SNAP:DRGN Cookbook

SNAP:DRGN Cookbook (with Hugh Cayless, Mark Depauw, Leif Isaksen, Faith Lawrence, Sebastian Rahtz), King's College London, 2014

01-Jan-2011 EpiDoc Guidelines

EpiDoc Guidelines (with Tom Elliott, Elli Mylonas, Simona Stoyanova, Charlotte Tupman, Scott Vanderbilt, et al.), version 8, Stoa Consortium, 2011-

01-Jan-2010 Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity

Digital Research and the Study of Classical Antiquity, with Simon Mahony (Ashgate Press, 2010)

01-Jan-2009 Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania

Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, by J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-Perkins, enhanced electronic reissue by Gabriel Bodard and Charlotte Roueché (2009)

01-Jan-2008 Though much is taken, much abides: Recovering antiquity through innovative digital methodologies

Edited Book

"Though much is taken, much abides": Recovering antiquity through innovative digital methodologies with Simon Mahony, Digital Classicist special issue, Digital Medievalist 4 (2008), available: https://journal.digitalmedievalist.org/4/volume/4/issue/0/

01-Jan-2007 Inscriptions of Aphrodisias

Monographs

Joyce Reynolds, Charlotte Roueché, Gabriel Bodard, Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (2007), available , ISBN 978-1-897747-19-3.

Publications available on SAS-space:

Date Details
Apr-2016 Epigraphers and Encoders: Strategies for Teaching and Learning Digital Epigraphy

PeerReviewed

This chapter will discuss the EpiDoc (TEI markup for epigraphy and papyrology) training workshops that have been run by colleagues from King’s College London and elsewhere for the past decade. We shall explore some of the evolving approaches used and strategies taken in the teaching of digital encoding to an audience largely of classicists and historians. Prominent among the assertions of EpiDoc training is that “encoding” is not alien to, in fact is directly analogous to, what philologists do when creating a formal, structured, arbitrarily expressed edition. We shall share some of the open teaching materials that have been made available, and consider paedagogical lessons learned in the light of EpiDoc practitioners who have progressed from training to running their own projects, as opposed to those who have learned EpiDoc directly from the published Guidelines or via the TEI (cf. Dee, q.v.). We shall also compare the teaching of EpiDoc to the teaching of epigraphy to students, and ask what the paedagogical approaches of both practices (which overlap, since many epigraphic modules now include a digital component, and very rarely teachers of epigraphy are treating EpiDoc as the native format for editing inscriptions) can offer to teachers and learners of both traditional and digital epigraphy.

Apr-2016 Epigraphers and Encoders: Strategies for Teaching and Learning Digital Epigraphy

PeerReviewed

This chapter will discuss the EpiDoc (TEI markup for epigraphy and papyrology) training workshops that have been run by colleagues from King’s College London and elsewhere for the past decade. We shall explore some of the evolving approaches used and strategies taken in the teaching of digital encoding to an audience largely of classicists and historians. Prominent among the assertions of EpiDoc training is that “encoding” is not alien to, in fact is directly analogous to, what philologists do when creating a formal, structured, arbitrarily expressed edition. We shall share some of the open teaching materials that have been made available, and consider paedagogical lessons learned in the light of EpiDoc practitioners who have progressed from training to running their own projects, as opposed to those who have learned EpiDoc directly from the published Guidelines or via the TEI (cf. Dee, q.v.). We shall also compare the teaching of EpiDoc to the teaching of epigraphy to students, and ask what the paedagogical approaches of both practices (which overlap, since many epigraphic modules now include a digital component, and very rarely teachers of epigraphy are treating EpiDoc as the native format for editing inscriptions) can offer to teachers and learners of both traditional and digital epigraphy.

Nov-2017 Standards for Networking Ancient Person-data: Digital approaches to problems in prosopographical space

NonPeerReviewed

Prosopographies disambiguate names appearing in sources by creating lists of persons, but the progress of scholarship now makes these lists difficult to maintain. In a digital context unique stable identifiers can be reshuffled ad libitum when searching and ordering information. Digital data increasingly brings together complementary research outputs: the Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies project takes on the challenge of creating an aggregated resource, adopting a Linked Open Data approach. In this paper we shall present three case studies highlighting the promise and problems of encoding unambiguous identities, titulature and other disambiguating information, and treating divine figures as person-data, respectively. Digital approaches are tools for research, assisting rather than replacing the historian, who remains central to the research endeavor.

Research Projects & Supervisions

Research projects:

Details

Pelagios- Cross-cultural After-Life of Classical Sites (CALCS) Institute of Classical Studies
Project period: 07-Jan-2016 - 30-Nov-2016

Research interests: History, Literatures in a modern language, Medieval History

Communal art reconceptualizing/rethinking metrical epigraphy network (CARMEN) Institute of Classical Studies
Project period: 01-Jan-2021 - 31-Dec-2024

Research interests: Classics

Connecting Late Antiquities Institute of Classical Studies
Project period: 01-Feb-2023 - 31-Jan-2025

Research interests: Classics

Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea

The aims of the project include a new study of all Ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions originating from the Northern Coast of the Black Sea; and publication of Russian and English critical editions of the inscriptions in print and digital formats. The region of the Northern Black Sea was home to numerous ancient Greek settlements from the third quarter of the 7th century BCE until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 CE.

Cataloguing Open Access Classics Serials (COACS)

Principal Investigator, Cataloguing Open Access Classics Serials, Feb 2017–Feb 2018; Jan–Aug 2019

Communal art reconceptualizing/rethinking metrical epigraphy network (CARMEN)

CARMEN explores Roman verse inscriptions as an important manifestation of communal art in Roman literary and visual culture. Carmina Latina Epigraphica, a corpus of some 4000 inscribed poems and poetic texts, were inscribed on publicly exposed monuments or objects used in public or private contexts. Exposed on lasting material such as stone, these poems accompanied the Roman Empire in its ever-changing configurations from the early third century BCE to Late Antiquity in an unbroken tradition that continues into the early Middle Ages and beyond.

Studying poetry in the epigraphic Roman tradition will help to regain an eminent body of European folk art tradition that could be produced and consumed by everybody, even semi-literates, perhaps even illiterates.

Cross-cultural After-Life of Classical Sites

Principal investigator, Cross-cultural After-Life of Classical Sites (CALCS), Pelagios micro-grant (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation). 2016.

EpiDoc Front-End Services (EFES)

Principal Investigator, EpiDoc Front-End Services (EFES), Jun 2017–May 2018.

Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies (Data and Relations in Greco-Roman Names)

The SNAP:DRGN project aims to address the problem of linking together large collections of material (datasets) containing information about persons, names and person-like entities managed in heterogeneous systems and formats. SNAP:DRGN began by piloting a new approach to working with diverse person data, using as a starting point three large datasets from the classical world: the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, an Oxford-based corpus of persons mentioned in ancient Greek texts; Trismegistos, a Leuven-run database of names and persons from Egyptian papyri; Prosopographia Imperii Romani, a series of printed books listing senators and other elites from the first three centuries of the Roman Empire. We modeled a simple structure using Web and Linked data technologies to represent relationships between databases and to link from references in primary texts to authoritative lists of persons and names. Moving forward, the SNAP project will expand the services provided, and incorporate more person-data from the ancient and mediaeval Mediterranean and neighbouring worlds.

Current PhD topics supervised:

Dates Details
From: 01-Sep-2018
Until:
Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia

Tamara Kalkhitashviki, Ilia State University, Tbilisi Georgia (external supervisor), Epigraphic Corpus of Georgia (started 2017)

From: 01-Oct-2020
Until:
The function of magic in Roman society c. 2nd century AD

Ms Nicole Iu, The function of magic in Roman society c. 2nd century AD

‘Magic’ is a complex concept that has been obscured by modern popular associations, but has existed in various forms throughout history. Defining ‘magic’ in an Ancient Roman context is challenging because Roman ‘magical’ practices were often carried out in a religious or medical context, particularly in times of crisis. My project aims to identify the function of Roman magic, its intersection with ancient medicine and religion, and its relationship with the concept of healing in the second century AD and in response to the Antonine Plague, a pandemic that swept across the Roman Empire at this time.

From: 01-Oct-2016
Until: 31-Oct-2021
Digital Humanities in Papyrology

Lucia Vannini, ICS, Digital Humanities in Papyrology (submission 2021)

Past PhD topics supervised:

Dates Details
From: 01-Oct-2016
Until: 31-Dec-2019
Cultural contact in Early Roman Spain through Linked Open Data

<p>Paula Granados García, Cultural contact in Early Roman Spain through Linked Open Data, Classics and Digital Humanities, Open University (external supervisor). Awarded 2019.</p>

From: 01-Jan-2017
Until: 31-Dec-2019
Kretikai Politeiai: Cretan Institutions from VII to I century BC

Irene Vagionakis, University of Venice Ca’ Foscari (external supervisor), Kretikai Politeiai: Cretan Institutions from VII to I century BC (completed 2019)

Available for doctoral supervision: Yes

Relevant Events

Related events:

Date Details
05-Oct-2015 "The EpiDoc Community: training, infrastructure and the future"

Given at 'Digital Epigraphy: The Use of TEI XML and Epidoc for Studying Non-Alphabetic Writing Systems', University of Bonn, Germany.

02-Sep-2015 Workshops "Introduction to EpiDoc" and "Linked open data for ancient prosopography and geography (SNAP and Pelagios)"

Workshops at 'Humanités numériques et Antiquité', University of Grenoble, France.

24-Jul-2015 Towards a virtual authority for distributed prosopographies

Paper at 'Per una Prosopografia dell'Egitto Romano', University of Padova, Italy

Workshop on digital classics, epigraphy and linked data

Workshop on digital classics, epigraphy and linked data, University of Sofia, Bulgaria, September 7–11, 2015

Consultancy & Media
Available for consultancy:
Yes
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