Workshop: Visual AI and The Humanities - An Introduction

Computer vision is one of AI's most visible success stories, and the subject of intense critical debate. This workshop will showcase the state of the art in Visual AI for cultural heritage and the digital humanities, and provide a hands-on introduction to some simple techniques for searching and classifying imagery in books, paintings, photographs and film. 

No prior knowledge of computer vision is required. Participants will learn how to perform instance-based recognition (or image matching); image comparison and differentiation; similarity search; and image classification. The workshop will also introduce participants to the study of bias within AI, as such controversial applications as facial recognition and automated image categorisation. The workshop can be followed either through online demos to be made available on the day, or by installing free and open-source software in advance (for installation see this guide). Participants will need a laptop (not a tablet), ideally in which they have administrative access rights. 

Dr. Giles Bergel is a digital humanist based in the Visual Geometry Group in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. A book historian by training, he has research interests in the computational analysis of print culture, copyright and book trade history. He maintains various digital resources for the study of the book and the book trade: he is currently the inaugural National Librarian of Scotland’s Fellow in Digital Scholarship, working on a project on chapbooks printed in Scotland.  

Due to high demand for our training events, our cancellation and no-show policy applies to bookings for this event. Click here for details of this policy.