Tom Elliott
Associate Director for Digital Programs and Senior Research Scholar
Tom Elliott graduated from Duke University in 1989 with B.S. in Computer Science and a second major in Classical Studies. Following service as a Communications and Computer Systems Officer in the United States Air Force, he worked as a software developer and program manager for AEgis Research Corporation (now part of BlueHalo) on a number of visual and engineering simulation projects. He subsequently earned M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2004) degrees in ancient history from from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, working under the supervision of Richard J.A. Talbert. Elliott's graduate research focused on the intersection of Roman documentary, administrative and geographic studies, as reflected in his master's thesis (Diocletianic Census Inscriptions from the Aegean Islands and Asia Minor) and his doctoral dissertation (Epigraphic Evidence for Boundary Disputes in the Early Roman Empire; see also github:demarc).
Tom has spent over two decades advancing the practice of digital humanities in ancient studies. In the late 1990s, he wrote database software that was used to prepare the alphabetical gazetteer and Map-by-Map Directory that accompanies the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000). During that period he also started the EpiDoc Community, which creates standards-based tools and guidelines for the digital encoding of epigraphic and papyrological texts like those published in the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias 2007, IOSPE: Ancient Inscriptions of the Black Sea, and Papyri.info. In August 2000, he was appointed as Founding Director of the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In February 2006, Tom stepped down from this position to assume full-time leadership of the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In 2008, he brought Pleiades with him to the Institute, where he also coordinates ISAW's digital strategy and research computing activities; collaboratively develops on-line scholarly publications; and supports and mentors faculty, scholars, and students in the application of computational methods to research and teaching in ancient studies.
His most recent publication addresses the history and development of Pleiades and its relationship to archaeological data:
- “The Pleiadic Gaze: Looking at Archaeology from the Perspective of a Digital Gazetteer.” In Classical Archaeology in the Digital Age – The AIAC Presidential Panel. Propylaeum, 2021. https://doi.org/10.11588/PROPYLAEUM.708.C10612.