Melissa Terras Mbe Freng Frse

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT MELISSA TERRAS MBE FRENG FRSE

I am the Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage within Design Informatics, Edinburgh College of Art, at the University of Edinburgh. An expert in digital innovation in the cultural and creative sectors, I have 25+ years of experience in digitisation of heritage content, and building award-winning digital projects and platforms. Recently, I\'ve been managing large-scale innovation support projects in the cultural and creative industries.Between 2022-24 I directed Creative Informatics, the Edinburgh based AHRC Creative Cluster (20••••24), supporting the spin-out of 47 companies. I\'m a founding Director of Transkribus, the AI-powered platform for text recognition of historical documents. I am University of Edinburgh lead for CoSTAR (UK Government’s Convergent Screen Technologies and performance in Realtime, 2023-29), being Co-Director of the CoSTAR Realtime Lab (with Abertay), and Co-Investigator of the CoSTAR Foresight Lab (with Goldsmiths, Loughborough, and BFI). I am also a Company Director of Expert Sleepers, the synth manufacturer. With a background in Art History and English Literature (MA, University of Glasgow), and Computing Science (MSc IT with distinction in Software and Systems, University of Glasgow), my doctorate (Engineering, University of Oxford) used machine learning to interpret deteriorated Ancient Roman texts. My research contributions are in the area of digitisation of cultural heritage, including: advanced digitisation techniques and approaches; understanding large-scale digitisation in the cultural heritage sector; and utilising the results of digitisation to undertake novel research and innovative projects. This has led to an interest in supporting others to innovate in the cultural and creative sector.I previously directed UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, employed at UCL 20••••17. At Edinburgh, I am Founding Director of the Centre for Data, Culture and Society, and was Director of Research for the Edinburgh Futures Institute (20••••23). I am an Expert Advisor to the UK Government’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. I was awarded an MBE in the 2025 New Years Honours List. I have been Co-I or PI of over £55m of research funding, authored over 150 academic papers, and 12 books including “Image to Interpretation: An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts” (2006, Oxford University Press), “Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader” (Ashgate 2013), and “Data-Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries\"(Routledge, 2024).