Expertise | Key figures
Historians
Prof John Charmley
Co-founder of Virtual Past. Head of the School of History,
University of East Anglia.
He specialises in modern diplomatic and political history, and created the 'Rise and fall of British Power' and 'Napoleon to Stalin' modules, on which he still lectures. His special subject on Britain and the Ottoman Empire in the C19th reflects his current research interests.
He has written 8 books and edited two more, and has written widely for the national press. Professor Charmley edits the Historical Associations, journal, ''History'.
Dr Robert Liddiard
Senior Lecturer, History, University of East Anglia.
He is an expert in the history of fortifications and has published widely on castles and high-status landscapes of the medieval period. His previous publications include Landscapes of Lordship (2000); ed. Anglo-Norman Castles (2003); Castles in Context (2005); ed. The Medieval Park (2007).
He led the Virtual Past 'Walberswick World War II' project, which received a certificate of commendation in the British Archaeological Awards 2010 and for which he also received a CUE East Public Engagement Award.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Dr Suzannah Lipscomb
Lecturer, Early Modern History, University of East Anglia.
Whilst reading for her D.Phil. at Balliol College, Oxford, she was a Jowett Senior Scholar and a Royal Historical Society Marshall Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research.
From February 2007 to August 2010, she was Research Curator at Hampton Court Palace, as the recipient of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Historic Royal Palaces and Kingston University. At Hampton Court, she was one of the lead curators responsible for creating a new exhibition and visitor experience in the Tudor palace to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne in 2009.
This historically credible new visitor experience led to a 43% increase in visitor numbers to Hampton Court in the six months after its opening, and was voted the 'top Heritage Day Out in the South East of England' by Which? Magazine in 2009. Suzannah is the author of 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII (Lion Hudson, 2009), and has several years experience in visitor interpretation and curatorship, and of research into Tudor court culture, monarchy, society and architecture.
3D Modellers
Prof Andy Day
Deputy Head, School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia.
He leads the Computer Graphics research group and is founder of the Urban Modelling Group and the Crowd Simulation Group,
(See www.urbanmodellinggroup.co.uk). He is also co-founder of Virtual Past, a collaboration with HIS.
He is a Fellow of Eurographics and has many publications in Graphics for cultural heritage. He is also PI on several EPSRC grants that involve population of urban environments and also the recent KTP with HEART on Historacle. He is co-investigator with S.Laycock on the EU funded 3D-CoForm project.
John Williams
First class graduate, Master of Science, University of East Anglia.
He has been producing high quality computer graphics as lead 3D Artist for Virtual Past since it's inception and has accrued considerable personal artistic and technical experience, and continues concentrate on expanding his skillset whilst project managing the Virtual Past artistic team.
John's work includes; the Norwich Castle prison project, the medieval Wingfield College, Blackfriars and the reconstructed lost landscape of the coastal defences in the 1940's at Walberswick.
Rowena Cooper
BA Hons Graduate Graphic Design, Norwich School of Art and Design.
She specialised in "stop motion" puppetry and animation giving her considerable skills to work in character design, and modelling. She has since concentrated on transferring her skills to CG techniques and has worked as a 3D artist for Virtual Past for the last two years. She is now the group's human character specialist.
Rowena's work includes stop motion animation for BBC shorts, concept character development, and set design for the animated children's pilot “Jack and Holly” (an educational learning series).
Whilst at Virtual Past she has created 3D characters for Norwich Castle, and for various Norwich HEART films. She also holds workshops and seminars for UEA Masters Games Design students in "stop motion and animation techniques".
Business Development
Julie Schofield
Business Development Manager
She is a highly experienced senior business manager with a record of achievement spanning both public and private sector operations. Julie has worked with Virtual Past since its launch in 2009.
