Thea Sommerschield
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Faculty of Arts
Contact
Biography
I am a Leverhulme EC Fellow at the University of Nottingham. My main research interests lie in the application of Machine Learning to the epigraphic cultures of the Mediterranean world, to explore new ways of writing and thinking about ancient history.
Since obtaining my DPhil in Ancient History (University of Oxford), I have been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, CHS Fellow at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies, Research Innovator at Google Cloud, and Ralegh Radford awardee at the British School at Rome. I co-lead the Ithaca projects, and work on the socio-cultural history and inscriptions of Greek Sicily.
Expertise Summary
- Ancient History
- Greek epigraphy
- Machine Learning for ancient languages
- Ancient Sicily (c. 700 BCE - 300 BCE)
- Greek religion
- Ancient NLP
Teaching Summary
I regularly supervise students in Greek and Roman history, epigraphy, AI applications to ancient texts, languages and cultures, and would welcome students in these areas.
I have taught graduate and undergraduate courses and classes in the areas of Classics and ancient Greek and Roman history for the universities of Venice Ca' Foscari, Pavia, Ferrara and ISAW.
I actively contribute to service work and outreach initiatives, aiming to raise awareness about FAIR, open and bias-aware data for the study of the Ancient World.
Research Summary
I'm currently working across three collaborative R&D streams:
-
The development of Artificial Intelligence methods for the study of the written cultures of the ancient world. Since 2017 I have been working with Google DeepMind to create an ecosystem of Machine Learning tools tackling different languages and aspects of the study of inscribed texts. I have received funding by the European Commission and the Leverhulme Trust, and the impact of our work has been widely recognized, featuring in international media (The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, New Scientist) and earning the cover issue of Nature.
-
Research into AI bias in ancient world datasets, generating awareness, and encouraging collaboration in the fields of Computer Science and Ancient World Studies through a high-impact communication, dissemination, and advocacy strategy. Examples include collaborations with leaders in academia and industry, as a member of the Google Cloud Research Innovator cohort and through my active involvement in the organising committees of major scientific conferences (ML4AL at ACL 2024). Additionally, I regularly deliver invited lectures and talks at conferences (CIEGL 2022), as well as engage with the general public through school outreach, TV, and public radio interviews (RAI).
- Study of the epigraphic and funerary practices of migrant and indigenous communities in Archaic and Classical western Sicily. I was awarded the G. Nenci prize by the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa for best doctoral thesis on ancient Sicily, and I continue to work on the island's history as cooperation partner of the Consuming the East in Sicily project (funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF at the University of Vienna), where I am responsible for the study of the inscriptions on the transport amphorae from the necropoleis of Himera. I also enjoy publishing new epigraphic material from Himera and its hinterland.
Recent Publications
THEA SOMMERSCHIELD, 2024. Iscrizioni su anfore greco-occidentali a Himera. In: BABETTE BECHTOLD and STEFANO VASSALLO, eds., Produzioni e circolazione delle anfore greco-occidentali (VI-V sec. a.C.): il contributo dalle necropoli di Himera 49. Peeters. 135-146 (In Press.)
THEA SOMMERSCHIELD*, YANNIS ASSAEL*, JOHN PAVLOPOULOS*, VANESSA STEFANAK, ANDREW SENIOR, CHRIS DYER, JOHN BODEL, JONATHAN PRAG, ION ANDROUTSOPOULOS and NANDO DE FREITAS, 2023. Machine learning for ancient languages: A survey Computational Linguistics. 29(2), 1-44 THEA SOMMERSCHIELD and STEFANO VASSALLO, 2023. Le storie di Eracle narrate a Terravecchia di Cuti: un nuovo louterion iscritto Sicilia Archeologica. 114, 33-47 YANNIS ASSAEL*, THEA SOMMERSCHIELD*, BRENDAN SHILLINGFORD, MAHYAR BORDBAR, JOHN PAVLOPOULOS, MARITA CHATZIPANAGIOTOU, ION ANDROUTSOPOULOS, JONATHAN PRAG and NANDO DE FREITAS, 2022. Restoring and attributing ancient texts with deep neural networks Nature. 603(7900), 280-283
Positions held
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Nottingham - Leverhulme Trust 2024 - 2027
Google Cloud, Research Innovators cohort 2022 - 2024
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, University of Venice Ca' Foscari 2021 - 2023
Fellow in Hellenic Studies, Harvard University - Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) 2021 - 2022
Ralegh Radford Rome Awardee, British School at Rome 2020
Craven University Fellow, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford 2017 - 2019
--------------
Education
DPhil in Ancient History, Wolfson College, University of Oxford 2016 - 2021
MSt in Greek History, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford 2015 - 2016
Diploma in Humanities, School of Advanced Study of Pavia (IUSS) 2012 - 2016
BA in Classics, Ghislieri College, University of Pavia 2012 - 2015
--------------
Current service
2023 - 2024: Organising Committee - Machine Learning for Ancient Languages workshop, ACL Bangkok 2024.
2023 - : General editorial board - Current Epigraphy, Institute for Classical Studies, London.
2023 - : Editorial board - Digital Classicist, Institute for Classical Studies, London.
2023 - 2024: Program Committee board - Language Technologies for Historical & Ancient Languages workshop, LT4HALA Milan 2024.
--------------
Online
Personal website | LinkedIn | Google Scholar | Academia.edu | ORCiD | Twitter | GitHub
THEA SOMMERSCHIELD, 2024. Iscrizioni su anfore greco-occidentali a Himera. In: BABETTE BECHTOLD and STEFANO VASSALLO, eds., Produzioni e circolazione delle anfore greco-occidentali (VI-V sec. a.C.): il contributo dalle necropoli di Himera 49. Peeters. 135-146 (In Press.)
THEA SOMMERSCHIELD*, YANNIS ASSAEL*, JOHN PAVLOPOULOS*, VANESSA STEFANAK, ANDREW SENIOR, CHRIS DYER, JOHN BODEL, JONATHAN PRAG, ION ANDROUTSOPOULOS and NANDO DE FREITAS, 2023. Machine learning for ancient languages: A survey Computational Linguistics. 29(2), 1-44 THEA SOMMERSCHIELD and STEFANO VASSALLO, 2023. Le storie di Eracle narrate a Terravecchia di Cuti: un nuovo louterion iscritto Sicilia Archeologica. 114, 33-47 YANNIS ASSAEL*, THEA SOMMERSCHIELD*, BRENDAN SHILLINGFORD, MAHYAR BORDBAR, JOHN PAVLOPOULOS, MARITA CHATZIPANAGIOTOU, ION ANDROUTSOPOULOS, JONATHAN PRAG and NANDO DE FREITAS, 2022. Restoring and attributing ancient texts with deep neural networks Nature. 603(7900), 280-283 JONATHAN PRAG and THEA SOMMERSCHIELD, 2021. Sicilia epigrafica: dai depositi alla valorizzazione. In: PANVINI, R, NICOLETTI, F, CONDORELLI CAFF, N and BEVACQUA, M, eds., Beni Culturali: dai depositi alla valorizzazione. Modi, forme, esperienze, norme. Edizioni Lussografica. 99-116
YANNIS ASSAEL*, THEA SOMMERSCHIELD* and JONATHAN PRAG, 2019. Restoring ancient text using deep learning: a case study on Greek epigraphy Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and the 9th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-IJCNLP). 6369–6376