Colourful 3D reconstructions of ancient monuments, virtual galleries and a multi-screen ‘intelligent’ classroom will transform teaching and research in the Humanities, thanks to a new Digital Centre at The University of Nottingham.

The Centre will give students and staff instant access to a variety of digitised images, multimedia and 3D models of ancient artefacts, making the use of traditional slides and 2D screen presentations like Powerpoint a thing of the past.

Work in the Departments of Art History, Classics, and Archaeology, as well as Music, Philosophy and Theology, has previously relied on lantern slides and printed versions of thousands of images, objects and texts. Now the latest visualisation technologies and equipment will be available, setting new standards for the study and teaching of the Humanities in the digital age.

And it will be cross-disciplinary, with colleagues in the Faculties of Engineering and Biomedical Sciences also using the equipment and exchanging expertise with Arts and Humanities. The technology will be installed in several locations in the existing Humanities premises but the Centre will eventually have its own bespoke space in the new Humanities building, which is due to open at University Park in September 2011.

Resources available to staff and students include an equipment pool including photo and video kit, design and editing software and a 3D scanner. New digitisation equipment will be used to create a vast digital archive of thousands of slides and photographs, and objects. Art History alone has more than 80,000 slides in its image library.

Dr Katharina Lorenz, from the Department of Classics, said: “Digital technologies are dramatically changing the appearance and delivery of our teaching and research. The Humanities are ideal disciplines to engage with these new visualisation methods because most of the sources we deal with are highly fragmented – to bring them to life, sophisticated technologies and methodological rigour are required.”

Art History’s Dr Mark Rawlinson added: “New digital technologies are capable of producing high-quality scans of individual artworks which help preserve originals whilst simultaneously offering access to students, researchers and members of the public from anywhere in the world. 3D modelling also enables the recreation of art exhibitions from the past, creating a new kind of visual archive and offering the opportunity to take virtual tours of historical art shows.”

Dr Will Bowden, from Archaeology, said: “The 3D modelling of objects will have a direct benefit for our research projects and will also stimulate new developments in teaching, for example, allowing students to undertake detailed examination of objects that would be otherwise unavailable to them, or allowing multiple students to simultaneously examine and discuss a single object.”

In collaboration with the University’s Centre for Advanced Study and the Digital Humanities Network, the Centre will also provide a meeting hub to exchange ideas and develop projects.

Further details can be found on the Centre’s website at www.nottingham.ac.uk/ digitalhumanities.