Maps Are Too Exciting! Digital innovations in mapping

John Barrett is Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries. Since 2005, John has provided recordings of Bodleian originals for numerous publications. His work involves the development of new methods of recording special collections material.

John is technical lead at the Bodleian for ARCHIOx (Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford), and the first person to use the Selene Photometric Stereo System within a major library. He has recorded the surface of a wide range of objects, in each case revealing the importance of their materiality beyond the reach of the naked eye, thereby also facilitating new scholarship.

Nick Millea is Map Curator at the Bodleian Libraries, an Honorary Fellow and 'Bartholomew Globe' winner at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and Chair of the British and Irish Committee for Map Information and Cataloguing Systems. He is also a founding member of The Oxford Seminars in Cartography.

Nick has published extensively on maps, including 50 Maps and the Stories They Tell (co-authored with Jerry Brotton). He has curated several exhibitions at the Bodleian - most recently Talking Maps.

He has spent many years researching and writing on the medieval Gough Map, including The Gough Map: the earliest road map of Great Britain?, and acting as Principal Investigator on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project Understanding the medieval Gough Map through physics, chemistry and history.

Yossef Rapoport is Professor of Islamic history at Queen Mary University London. He researches medieval Islamic maps, focusing on Arabic maps from the middle Islamic period (1000-1500). He was part of the Oxford-based Medieval Islamic Views of the Cosmos project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and led by Professor Emilie Savage-Smith.

Yossef consequently published An Eleventh-Century Guide to the Cosmos and Lost Maps of the Caliphs (both with Emilie Savage-Smith). His survey of Islamic cartography, published as Islamic Maps, includes a chapter on the maps of Al-Idrīsī and their unique place in the history of medieval map-making.

Sanne Frequin is an art historian specialising in digital art history. Her research focuses on the digital reconstruction of lost or damaged artefacts and on the use of digitized artefacts for research and education, particularly for early modern art.

Currently, Sanne is working on the digital and 3D reconstruction of the panel painting of the Lindau Master, and on the serious game Medieval Me - where high school students are introduced to interdisciplinary collaboration.

Sanne is the academic coordinator of the Masters in Art History at the University of Utrecht, where she is an Assistant Professor. She is a board member of the Utrecht University Teaching Academy and contributes to the Digital ArtLab.

Judith Siefring is Head of Digital Collections Discovery at the Bodleian Libraries. She manages a programme of digital library projects and services to enable research and teaching, with a particular focus on making special collections content discoverable online.

Resources developed and managed within Bodleian Digital Collections Discovery include Digital Bodleian and Manuscripts and Archives at Oxford University.

Bruce Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in Chicago; founder of Bruce Mau Studio; and Innovator in Residence at Freeman Company, the global leader in event services.

Across his 30-year career in design innovation, Bruce has collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. He became an international figure with the publication of his landmark book S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. Bruce is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for whole-system transformation.