Data in the Desert: Using Cutting-edge Technologies and Methods to Advance Digital Humanities Research in Egypt
Oct 29, 2025 — 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The Faculty of Arts, in collaboration with uOttawa INNOVA Space, invites you to a unique talk highlighting cutting-edge innovation in Digital Humanities research. The presentation will take place in the context of Professor Jitse Dijkstra’s SSHRC-funded project, Picturing Religion: The Philae Temple Graffiti Project, from the Department of Classics and Religious Studies.
Guest Lecture
In this lecture, Prof. Nicholas Hedley (Simon Fraser University) will present research conducted over the past five years at the Temple of Isis at Philae—a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of Egypt’s most significant tourist attractions. As part of the SSHRC-funded Picturing Religion: The Philae Temple Graffiti Project, he leads the spatial reality capture and digital recording components.
By leveraging emerging technologies and advanced recording methods, he has produced the first-ever digital wall plans and three-dimensional datasets of key temple structures where figural graffiti have accumulated since the temple’s construction in the 3rd century BCE.
These outputs—including spatial reality capture, data processing, and visualization—are enabling colleagues to discover and interpret previously undocumented graffiti, which will be featured in a major forthcoming publication. His digital recording and reconstruction work also supports the development of four-dimensional analyses of graffiti distribution across the temple complex.
Drawing on examples from Philae and other projects he has contributed to, Prof. Hedley will offer a critical reflection on the implications of these methods for advancing new frontiers in the Digital Humanities.
Nicholas Hedley
Professor of Geography, Simon Fraser University
Nicholas Hedley is a Professor of Geography and founding Director of the Spatial Interface Lab at Simon Fraser University. He is a recognized expert in 3D visualization and has used an extensive range of 3D data survey, simulation and visualization techniques, including photogrammetry and laser scanning, across a wide array of applied geographic contexts, for projects in academia, industry and museums. In the context of the SSHRC-funded ‘Picturing Religion: The Philae Temple Graffiti Project’, a collaboration between Simon Fraser University and the University of Ottawa, he applies these years of experience to the recording and 3D capture of ancient graffiti at this site.