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Gamer data – the heart of the matter (oh dear)

Enough pussyfooting around with ludic.interest. We conducted this survey because we wanted to get an idea of what would encourage people to play a game that used mobile technology to engage players in the story that take place in a number of cultural heritage locations around Southampton. (Though in other news, our funding bid for that project fell at the second hurdle, so this research is likely to now be, both literally and metaphorically “academic. Continue reading →

Lead and the Roman water system

Half a century after lead poisoning was proposed as the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire, a wave of publications to refute this idea put an end to this theory. Although lead is no longer considered the main culprit in the decline of Roman civilization, its presence in the Roman water distribution system water is still worthy of consideration as a major public health problem. The Archaeology of Portus course will introduce some of the methods employed in this research. Continue reading →

Nuffield launch

Andy Fisher and David Owen Norris (channeling Billy Mayerl, stripey jacket and all) Last Wednesday we had an event to mark the opening of the newly-refurbished Nuffield theatre Kitchen, a café space that is housing the lovely Brinsmead baby grand that was given to us in the autumn.  Andy Fisher, our head of commercial composition, played Gershwin and accompanied postgraduate singer Lizzie Rogers in a sneak preview of some of the songs from his new one-woman show, Girl in a Crisis. Continue reading →

More maths

Last time I finished with this matrix of scatter-plots, ordered by the magnitude of correlation. But what does it actually mean? Lets take a step back, and look at those derived variables. I ask R to describe the table of variables that I created previously, which include the notional ludic.interest variable and the Hard, Serious, Easy and People fun preference variables. Continue reading →

Material seas

    In the last week I’ve spent an improbably large amount of time thinking about various philosophical conceptions of maritime space. This is due partly to Monday’s British Waters and Beyond: The cultural significance of the sea since 1800 at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, and partly to my increasing obsession with sailing directions. Continue reading →

Teaching Digital Humanities – Higher Education Academy Summit

Multiple images shared via twitter of the #dhtapestry as it evolved I spent the last two days at a fascinating event in Lewes funded by the Higher Education Academy. The “summit” was focused on the teaching of Digital Humanities, with a view to the HEA gaining a sense of the current issues and priorities in teaching and learning. This will in turn inform further HEA policy and recommendations. Continue reading →

Teaching in higher education through the medium of English

A five-day course in ‘Teaching in higher education through the medium of English’ will be taking place at the University of Southampton from 9th – 13th June 2014. The course is designed for academics in universities across the world whose first language is not English and who are teaching on degree programmes and presenting research through the medium of English. Continue reading →

Call for session chairs…

The PGRAS 2014 committee are looking for some willing PGR students to chair our sessions. This will involve introducing the speakers and fielding questions from the audience during panel discussions. The session titles are: Thinking and Doing in Archaeology, Exchange and Contact on the Fringes of the Mediterranean. Museums, Heritage Management and Public Engagement. Settlements, Migration and Social Landscapes. Archaeologies of Technological Innovation. Continue reading →