On March 1, Dr. Agnes Thomas assumed her position as the new executive director of mainzed, the Mainz Center for Digitality in the Humanities and Cultural Studies. She already has relevant experience from her time on the executive board of the Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH) from 2016 to 2017.
With a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation, Agnes Thomas studied Classical Archaeology in Tübingen, Athens, and Cologne. After successfully completing her master’s degree, she played a key role in the evaluation process titled “Languages and Cultures of Selected Epochs and Regions,” during which data on 23 so-called “minor subjects” were collected and systematically analyzed. In addition to this intensive examination of academic structures at universities, she was also involved in the implementation of the bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in “Ancient Languages and Cultures.” As part of her dissertation, she was simultaneously a fellow of the Onassis Foundation and the DFG Research Training Group 846 “Slavery—Servitude and Corvée—Forced Labor” at the University of Trier and worked as a visiting scholar at Tufts University in Medford on the machine-readability of scientific datasets. This research laid the foundation for the bilateral“Hellespont Project. “Integrating Arachne and Perseus”between the German Archaeological Institute and Tufts University, which Agnes Thomas led as principal investigator from 2010 to 2013. The project implemented the automated linking of archaeological and philological data from large, distributed repositories using Semantic Web technologies. This technological approach was highly innovative at the time and is now widely used. After the project concluded, Agnes Thomas joined the editorial team of the International Käte Hamburger Kolleg Morphomata in Cologne, from where she began her role on the executive board of the CCeH in 2016.
Starting in 2017, she further developed her extensive experience in planning and organizing academic events as well as grant applications at Goethe University Frankfurt, where she coordinated the research network “COPING PRACTICES” and was entrusted with the academic and administrative preparation of an application for a Cluster of Excellence. In 2018, Agnes Thomas joined Justus Liebig University Giessen as a research assistant for teaching and research in the fields of Classical Archaeology and the Digital Humanities, and from there she is now taking on the role of academic director of mainzed.
“We are delighted to have secured Agnes Thomas for this position. With her highly communicative personality and extensive experience, as well as her ideas and innovative concepts, she brings all the qualities necessary for success as executive director of mainzed,” says Kai-Christian Bruhn, director of mainzed. The Mainz Center for Digitality in the Humanities and Cultural Studies (mainzed) is a network designed to pool digital expertise across six institutions in the humanities and cultural studies based in the academic hub of Mainz. In addition to Mainz University of Applied Sciences—where mainzed’s administrative office is located—mainzed’s partner organizations include the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, the Institute for Regional History of Rhineland-Palatinate, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Leibniz Institute for European History, and the Leibniz Center for Archaeology.
