Digital Humanities (DH) is an exciting branch of study that uses emerging and computational technologies to engage material from the ancient world. DH methods create tools, visualisations, resources and analyses that could not be produced by more analogue methods, thus seeking to radically transform our understanding of the past. Digital Humanities forms an important branch of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities’ ‘Transformative Humanities’ research plan.

Research specialisms within the department include the application of machine learning and Bayesian statistical methods to literary history & the training of large language models for ancient languages (Prof. Peter Heslin); spatial network analysis, geospatial methods and multivariate analysis, particularly as applied to archaeological data (Dr Michael Loy); digital epigraphy and EpiDoc (Dr Caroline Barron); research through digitised archive holdings (Dr Lucy Jackson); corpus linguistic analysis (Dr Alessandro Vatri).

In September 2025 we will be joined by two more colleagues with a principal research focus on Digital Humanities, making Durham the largest hub of Digital Humanities research across any UK Classics departments.