Seven Awards made as part of AHRC-EPSRC-JISC Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative 

 31 May 2007 

 

Seven major research grants in Arts and Humanities e-Science, to a total value of over £2m, have just been awarded to UK academic teams as a result of the recent AHRC-EPSRC-JISC Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative.

The projects cover a wide range of subjects in both the arts and the humanities, from dance and music to museum studies, archaeology, classics and Byzantine history, and a wide range of e-Science technologies. A central feature of this work will be the development of advanced technologies to aid research collaboration and resource-sharing across the internet.

In addition, four of the projects have also received a four-year postgraduate studentship to train young researchers in this field of work.

By developing new and advanced methods in areas such as the image-processing of ancient manuscripts, choreography in virtual space, the computer simulation of a famous medieval battle, and the use of 3-D scanning to analyze the surfaces of museum objects, the scheme will not only open up new avenues in arts and humanities research, but will also test and extend the present range of e-Science technologies, and thus ultimately enhance their use in other domains as well. The awards are as follows:

Principle Investigator

Institution

Project Title

Helen Bailey

University of Bedfordshire

Relocating Choreographic Process: The impact of Grid technologies and collaborative memory on the documentation of practice-led research in dance

Alan Bowman

University of Oxford

Image, Text, Interpretation: e-Science, Technology and Documents

Tim Crawford

Goldsmiths College, University of London

Purcell Plus: Exploring an eScience Methodology for Musicologists

Vincent Gaffney

University of Birmingham

Medieval Warfare on the Grid: The Case of Manzikert

Sally MacDonald

University College London

E-Curator: 3D colour scans for remote object identification and assessment

Julian Richards

University of York

Archaeotools: Data mining, facetted classification and E-archaeology

Monica Schraefel

University of Southampton

musicSpace: Using and Evaluating e-Science Design Methods and Technologies to Improve Access to Heterogeneous Music Resources for Musicology

Media Contact

For further information please contact Jake Gilmore, AHRC Press and Public Affairs Officer, j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk; tel: 0117 987 6773.

Editors Notes

Arts and Humanities Research Council: Each year the AHRC provides approximately £90 million to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,500 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. Arts and humanities researchers constitute nearly a quarter of all research-active staff in the higher education sector. The quality and range of research supported not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. The EPSRC invests around £740 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC also actively promotes public awareness of science and engineering. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research.

The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK.