Administration
Tom Elliott graduated from Duke University in 1989 with B.S. in Computer Science and a second major in Classical Studies. Following service as a Communications and Computer Systems Officer in the United States Air Force, he worked as a software developer and program manager for AEgis Research Corporation on a number of visual and engineering simulation projects. He received his Ph.D. in Ancient History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2004, for research focused on the intersection of Roman documentary, administrative and geographic studies. He is currently developing a digital publication on the basis of his doctoral dissertation: Epigraphic Evidence for Boundary Disputes in the Early Roman Empire (Chapel Hill, 2004). This publication will employ the EpiDoc encoding guidelines, an international standard for the digitization of documentary texts that he initially developed himself on the basis of the Text Encoding Initiative.
Beginning in 1999, Tom worked as a research assistant for the Classical Atlas Project, and played a key role in the production and preparation of the alphabetical gazetteer and Map-by-Map Directory that accompanies the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000). In August 2000, he was appointed as Founding Director of the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In February 2006, Tom stepped down from this position to assume full-time leadership of the Pleiades Project, which is developing an online workspace for ancient geography that will digitize, update, diversify and disseminate the geographic information originally assembled by the Atlas Project. In 2008, he brought this role with him to the Institute, where he is also responsible for developing and overseeing a spectrum of innovative digital projects and services.
Tom's CV, blogs and project web sites are best accessed via his NYU home page.