In recent years, with the generous support of an NWO Aspasia grant and several Leiden University grants I have developed a number of Digital Humanities initiatives, based on the conviction that they are instrumental in bringing scholars and resources from different disciplines together, and that our study of complex cultural processes could benefit from experimenting with new ways of visualization and publication.
My main project is Mapping Visions of Rome, a web based research Portal to annotate, link and map literature on the City and Symbol of Rome. For more information on this project developed in Nodegoat see here. This research environment forms the basis for several public interfaces I have developed and am still in the process of developing, such as the interactive public ‘appendix’ to my monograph ‘The Renaissance Battle for Rome’.
Another of my projects is De Vereeuwigde Stad, a mobile website (app) for (ancient) literature on locations in Rome, which includes information on ancient sites, characters and authors; suggestions for walks through Rome; early modern images of Roman locations. Now only available in Dutch, I am planning to make an English version in the near future.
See: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHrml8Hvbv3OyB6rx7eXUuQ
A final spin-off is the Roma Aeterna Kaart: a mapping tool to connect journal articles in ‘Roma aeterna. Tijdschrift over de Eeuwige Stad’ to locations in Rome.
Besides my projects in Nodegoat, I am also dedicated to further the collaboration and interoperability between digital humanities projects concerned with the heritage of Rome, from different periods of history and from different disciplines. To this end I have organized several workshops and set up a web portal to collect such projects: www.digitalromanheritage.com
In several phases of developing these projects I have been assisted by student interns and assistants; Caroline van den Oever has been and still is most prominent among them.
Publications in the context of this research project:
(2019) ‘What are urban gazetteers and why do we need them?’, with Valeria Vitale, in Europeana Tech, issue 12 (https://pro.europeana.eu/page/issue-12-pelagios) (written in the context of a Pelagios Working Group Urban Gazetteers, coordinator together with Valeria Vitale (King’s College, London) and Janelle Jenstad (University of Victoria, Canada), funded by a Pelagios Commons Working Group Grant)
(2018) ‘Mapping Visions of Rome and Digital Roman Heritage Connectivity between Literary and Artistic Heritage in a Digital Age’, in Umanistica Digitale 2 (2018) DOI: 10.6092/issn.2532-8816/7814
