Editing Inscriptions with EpiDoc: Case Studies from Glasgow
Thursday 11th December 2025, 2–4pm
Room 709A, Boyd Orr Building
Please sign up for this event via Eventbrite here.
Join us for TELab’s first event on epigraphy: the study of ancient inscriptions on a variety of different media. The session will showcase two Glasgow projects at different stages of development, each engaged in creating a digital edition using EpiDoc (the international standard for encoding ancient texts, especially inscriptions). Dr Alex Antoniou will present his work on editing inscriptions which concern the worship of the Roman emperor and his family in the Italian peninsula, while Dr Nora White (EMISoS Project, Maynooth University) will exhibit the recently published digital edition of inscriptions in a unique script from early medieval Ireland and Britain (Og(h)am project).
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Digitising ancient and medieval texts: an introduction to EpiDoc
https://github.com/EpiDoc/Tutorials/wiki/Glasgow-Dec-2025
When: 9-11 December, 2025
Where: University of Glasgow
Taught by Alex Antoniou, Gabriel Bodard, Patricia O’Connor, Nora White.
EpiDoc is the de facto standard for the encoding of ancient epigraphic (including Ogham) and papyrological editions in TEI XML for online publication and interchange (epidoc.stoa.org). In this two-day, hands-on training workshop at the University of Glasgow (9–10 December), we will introduce the encoding of ancient and medieval texts in XML, and sources of information and support on EpiDoc. No technical knowledge is required, but participants are expected to be broadly familiar with the transcription conventions for inscriptions or papyri (e.g. the Leiden Conventions), and either Greek, Latin, Irish/Gaelic or the ancient language of their epigraphic or papyrological tradition.
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Launch of O3D v2.0
When: Friday 12 September
Where: Royal Irish Academy, Dublin
The OG(H)AM project, a Collaborative Digital Humanities project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland (2021-2025), and closely related to the EMISoS project, has been digitally documenting all c. 500 extant objects inscribed in the ogham script. For the first time, the project has recorded ogham writing on all media (stone pillars and small portable objects on wood, bone, or metal), from all countries in which ogham is found (Ireland, Wales, England incl. Cornwall and Devon, Scotland and the northern islands, and the Isle of Man), and extending from its origin in the 4th century until the dawn of the modern revival c. 1850.
To celebrate the work and the achievements of the OG(H)AM project, the revised Ogham in 3D (O3D) digital corpus (ogham.celt.dias.ie/) was launched on Friday 12 September in the Royal Irish Academy as part of the conference Teangeolaíocht na Gaeilge 2025. The new database contains extensive multi-disciplinary information and documentation, including 3D recordings, of ogham inscriptions. The revised and enlarged metadata ensures searchability and accessibility of the data, and greatly expands its thematic, chronological, and geographical scope.
The programme of the launch consisted of the following short presentations:
- Nora White: The history of Ogham in 3D and the new database
- Katherine Forsyth: Ogham across the isles
- Megan Kasten: The digitisation of ogham
- Patricia O Connor: The encoding of ogham inscriptions
- David Stifter: The oghams in the National Museum of Ireland and new linguistic insights
- Deborah Hayden: Manuscript ogham and the Royal Irish Academy
- Katherine Forsyth & David Stifter: Outreach, acknowledgements, and concluding remarks
The OG(H)AM project (full title: Harnessing digital technologies to transform understanding of ogham writing, from the 4th century to the 21st) was a collaboration of researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Maynooth. The Ogham in 3D website is hosted by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
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Digital Epigraphy Workshop:
3D imaging and EpiDoc XML training
(https://github.com/EpiDoc/Tutorials/wiki/Maynooth-May-2025)
When: Monday, May 26, 2025 – Wednesday, May 28, 2025.
Where: Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University.
This three-day, in-person workshop introduced several digital approaches to the study of epigraphy—reading and publishing historical texts inscribed on stone or other durable materials, and recording the objects on which they are inscribed. We discussed and had the opportunity to practice two advanced imaging techniques: photogrammetry and reflectance transformation imaging, both of which use photography to capture 3D and other surface information of heritage objects. We also applied the encoding scheme EpiDoc (an implementation of TEI XML) to record the text and object description and history of inscriptions in Old Irish, Latin, Greek, Egyptian and other ancient languages.
The workshop, held in both Trinity College Dublin (Monday 26 May) and Maynooth University (27-28 May), was co-hosted by the EMISoS project (Maynooth University) and the Weingreen Museum/Department of Classics (Trinity College Dublin) in collaboration with Dr Gabriel Bodard (University of London). The training was led by Gabriel Bodard (London), Megan Kasten (Glasgow), Christine Morris (Trinity), Patricia O’Connor (Maynooth) and Nora White (Maynooth). The workshop also included two exceptional keynote lectures by Charlotte Roueché (King’s College London) and Pádraic Moran (University of Galway). Programme and keynote posters and abstracts below.
Programme
Keynote Lectures
