Dr Costas Papadopoulos, Ph.D. (C.P.)

My research aligns with the Faculty’s motto of ‘moving boundaries, bridging disciplines’, taking intersectional, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approaches to explore epistemologies and ontologies of the material past. My work has its roots in ethnography, archaeology, digital humanities, and museum and cultural studies, exploring modelling and representation at the intersections of the physical and the digital. It advances understandings of the experience and perception of heritage; engages with debates on the role of interactive research in digital humanities; explores ways to build epistemological frameworks for multimodal research; and, integrates Arts into STE(A)M learning via socially-engaged research by facilitating digital literacy and creative thinking.

My interest in ethnography developed while still a BA student in History and Archaeology at the University of Crete, Greece. My research focused on ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological perspectives of pottery production in Greece. By the early 2000s, it was clear that it was becoming imperative to document dying practices of production, with some traditions in danger of being lost. Video was deemed the most appropriate medium. This research was published in two documentaries in which I had a leading role in recording, editing, and producing. One of these, ‘Days of Pottery’, took part in the peer-reviewed International Festival of Archaeological Movies – Agon (2006).

Moussai, a village abandoned in the 1960s due to the large-scale migration in Greece from the countryside to cities. Taking an ethnographic approach, my research focused on the human factor in the abandonment processes, and its transformation into an archaeological site. I opted for video as the best way to not only document findings, but to reach a wider audience. The resultant documentary, ‘One Step before Archaeology: The Formation of a Deposition’ was selected for the ‘The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival’ (Oregon, USA, 2011) and is featured on The Archaeology Channel Video News. This research was also published in 2013 in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology.

It was through the lens of ethnographic and multimedia work that I began working with virtual world technologies. I found that while video allowed for documentation, it did not provide the affordances that 3D reconstructions could, i.e. a multisensory environment in which experimentation, analysis, and interpretation could be carried out. My research emphasised the role of light in the experience of spaces, human movement, and ergonomics. This work was first published in 2009 in the peer-reviewed conference proceedings of the International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Intelligent Cultural Heritage, followed by the monograph Death Management and Virtual Pursuits (Archaeopress, 2010) and a series of articles and book chapters exploring the role of light in bast built spaces. I also brought together a network of international experts for The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology.

Virtual World technologies provide a means to enhance our palette of interpretive methodologies, especially in the exploration of sensorial affordances in ways that cannot be accomplished, with other digital methods. For example, Corporeal Engagements with Clay (funded by the British Academy), explores different methods for studying one of the richest assemblages of figurines in the southeastern Mediterranean, unearthed in Koutroulou Magoula, Greece. This approach resulted in an exploratory framework that deploys digital imaging to explore the sensorial affordances of this corpus, foregrounding the embodied and performative process of making material culture.  

An overarching theme that informs my research is the integration of new media in cultural practices to enable new ways of producing knowledge. I integrate Arts into STE(A)M by melding humanities and technology in creative collaborations by making atypical audiences co-creators of knowledge.

This has led me to develop a new research strand that focuses on transforming the educational experience by repurposing academic research for second-level education and intergenerational groups. In 2012 I co-developed Tangible Pasts, a Mixed Reality prototype in the form of a book to communicate archaeological knowledge using a tangible augmented reality interface.

Considering present-day challenges of how technologies distract from physical experiences, my current research explores blending the physical and the digital (phygital) through hands-on engagements. Along with colleagues from Maynooth University, we developed History in a Box (funded by the Irish Research Council), an educational technology project integrating physical artefacts that enable tablet-based content, including augmented reality, in a classroom experience. This project was designed as participatory in its approach to development and testing by involving teachers in the design process. Funding from Science Foundation Ireland, for the project eDuCaTE: The Decade of Commemorations and Community Engagement through Technology (Co-PI), further funded it as a public engagement project. One strand of this grant allowed the redevelopment of History in a Box as an intergenerational learning experience held in museums across Ireland as well as for senior citizens enabling them to cross the digital divide.

Based on the ethos of knowledge exchange and principles of multimodality, I have co-developed #dariahTeach, a publicly-available, multilingual, community-driven platform for teaching and training materials for the digital humanities. A recent European grant funded by DG:Connect for IGNITE: Design Thinking & Making in the Arts & Sciences (Co-PI) builds on #dariahTeach to develop a 20 ECTS module that fosters cross-sectorial curricula by combining entrepreneurship and technology with arts and heritage.

Some of my recent work for the COST-Action ARKWORK: Archaeological Practices and Knowledge Work in the Digital Environment has explored the character and value of scholarship within digitally mediated environments. As part of this, the co-authored paper ‘The Digital Humanist: Contested Status within Contesting Futures’ has been published in the Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. A special issue for the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology on Digital Scholarship in Archaeology is also in preparation.

Along the same lines, and as part of Scholarship in 3D funded by Mellon Foundation, I started problematising 3D visualisations as scholarship in its own right. This project worked towards the creation of a new paradigm for reconceiving 3D models as academic outputs by establishing a publishing cooperative.