Bio
Melissa Terras is Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh and Director of its Centre for Digital Scholarship. Her interdisciplinary background spans art history, literature, computer science, and engineering. She co-founded the Centre for Digital Humanities at University College London, where she also served as Director. Her research focuses on the use of AI in cultural heritage, including collaborations such as Transcribe Bentham and Transkribus—one of the first AI cooperatives—designed to support collective access to historical texts. Terras earned her DPhil from the University of Oxford, developing intelligent systems to assist historians in reading ancient documents. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Society of Antiquaries, and was appointed MBE for services to digital humanities.