Anna Foka

Anna Foka is Scientific Leader of the Digital Humanities Initiative at the Institute for Archives, Museums and Libraries (ABM) Uppsala University, and Associate Professor in Information Technology and the Humanities at Humlab, Umeå University, Sweden. She has a background Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology (MA 2006, PhD 2009, University of Liverpool) as well as Media and Performance Studies (NCU Athens, Greece).

Anna Foka's research interests lie in the intersection of digital technology with historical disciplines. She has published on classics, ancient history and archaeology, gender and humour, classical reception, game studies, augmented and virtual reality for museums, digital visualizations and geography.

Dr. Foka's latest project is funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation investigates movement, transformation, and crisis through the prisms of digital technology and ancient history, using the second-century CE Description of Greece (Periegesis Hellados) of Pausanias. The project team will create a Geographic Information System (thereon GIS) a database and a digital map of Pausanias' representation of the Greek world. Unlike conventional maps, Periegesis' digital map aims to represent the text's multi-layered spatial configurations, in particular its intersections with different moments in the cultural history of this contested and ritualised landscape. Based on annotating the text of Pausanias, the map will enable the identification and visualization of all place entities and connected ritual activities and/or historical events. In this way, the digital map will form part of the investigative process, to enable the study of movement and trace the transformation of social infrastructures (temples, theatres, tombs etc.) in times of peace and conflict.