Sebastian Heath
Clinical Associate Professor of Computational Humanities and Roman Archaeology
Director of Graduate Studies, AY2024-25, AY2025-26, & AY2026-27
Chair, PhD Admissions Committee, AY2025-26
- GitHub: sfsheath
- ORCID: Sebastian Heath
- VIAF: 220831018
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HlkJu3cAAAAJ&hl=en
- Zotero: sebastianheath
Sebastian Heath has an A.B. from Brown University in Medieval Studies and received his Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. His research interests include Roman archaeology, Roman pottery, numismatics, as well as Digital Humanities at a global scale and with a focus on computational approaches to the study Mediterranean material culture. He is co-editor with David Ratzan of ISAW Papers. Along with Eric Poehler of the University of Massachusetts, he is co-director of the Getty-funded Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project and the related Pompeii Linked Open Data initiative (P-LOD). In 2025, he initiated the project Global Approaches to Early Representations of the Human Figure (GAERHF).
Recent courses taught include the graduate seminars "Graph Databases and Network Analysis" (Spring 2023, upcoming 20216) and "3D and Virtual Reality for the Ancient World" (Spring 2021), and "Generative Antiquity" (with Patrick Burns , Fall 2024).
Sebastian has participated in excavation and survey in Cyprus, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. He is the editor of the volume Digital Approaches to teaching the Ancient Mediterranean (2020). Other recent publications include "Estimating and Mapping Roman Amphitheater Seating Capacity" in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, "Roman Studies and Digital Resources" with R. Bagnall in the Journal of Roman Studies, "SPARQL as a first step for querying and transforming numismatic data: Examples from Nomisma.org", and "Animated Shadows on Virtual Stone: Ancient Sundials in a Gallery Setting" with C. Roughan and R. Herschman in the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. Other recent work includes "Preliminary Report on Early Byzantine Pottery from a Building Complex at Kenchreai (Greece)" in ISAW Papers. He is co-editor with Billur Tekkök of the digital publication Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia), is an editor of The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project: Internet Edition, and a founding editor of Nomisma.org. Along with Jennifer Chi, he is co-editor of the exhibition catalog Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos. Other articles and chapters include "Legal Threats to Cultural Exchange of Archaeological Materials" (online) in the American Journal of Archaeology (2009); "Diversity and Reuse of Digital Resources for Ancient Mediterranean Material Culture" (online) in the volume Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity, Bodard and Mahony, eds. (2010); and "Closing Gaps with Low-Cost 3D" in Visions of Substance: 3d Imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology, B. Olson and W. Caraher, eds. (2015). He was Project Manager of the NEH-Funded "Linked Ancient World Data Institute" (LAWDI). Reports on many of the projects presented at LAWDI are available in "Current Practice in Linked Open Data for the Ancient World," edited with T. Elliott and J. Muccigrosso in ISAW Papers 7. With Joseph Rife he was founding editor for the Kenchreai Archaeological Archive.
From 2008 to 2011, Dr. Heath served as Vice-President for Professional Responsibilities of the Archaeological Institute of America. He came to ISAW from the American Numismatic Society, where he remains a Research Scientist, Life Fellow, and Trustee (2017-2026).
See https://nyu.academia.edu/SebastianHeath for links to digital copies of additional publications and other materials.