Sebastian Rahtz, a celebration of his work

Sebastian Patrick Quintus Rahtz (13 February 1955-15 March 2016) was Chief Data Architect for the University of Oxford and a member of Wolfson College and its Digital Research Cluster. This series of short talks by colleagues celebrates 'SPQR' and his many and varied achievements in Humanities computing. Sebastian’s involvement with free and open source software goes back to the late 1980’s as a developer in the community around the TeX typesetting system on which he published widely. He maintained an open source TeX distribution for ten years and a variety of TeX-related packages. He was an active member of the XML and XSLT communities most importantly as one of the technical leads for the Text Encoding Initiative in which he served on the Board of Directors and Technical Council over many years. He was also Director of Academic IT Services and setup the JISC-funded national advisory service for open source software, OSS Watch, and worked on linked data projects such as CLAROS.

SPQR and Computer Archaeology: the early years

Gary Lock and Paul Reilly talk about how Sebastian helped British CAA school of practitioners be more international.

11-16
18:02

Linked Open Data

Dr. Leif Isaksen and Alex Dutton talk about Sebastian's inspiring leadership in the Linked Open Data movement in cultural heritage.

11-16
10:04

Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School

Pip Wilcox from the Bodleian Libraries talks about Sebastian's long standing contribution to teaching at the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School (DHOxSS).

11-16
14:59

Digital Humanities

Dave De Roure talks about Sebastian's contributions to the digital humanities community in Oxford and the wider world.

11-16
10:08

What Sebastian Taught Us

Joe Talbot talks about Sebastian's many achievements, his work and shares some personal reflections and video footage of the man.

11-16
16:33

Linked Cultural Heritage

Donna Kurtz talks about working with Sebastian over a number of years on various Linked Cultural Heritage projects.

11-16
22:48

The Open Source Advisory Service - OSS Watch

Rowan Wilson gives a talk about working with Sebastian on setting up the national service - OSS Watch, the Open Source Software advisory service.

11-16
14:57

The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names

Robert Parker, Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford, talks about Sebastian's work with Oxford Classics in developing the lexicon of greek names.

11-16
12:04

TeX Live - Don Knuth remembers SPQR

Anne Trefethen reads a special statement from founder Donald Knuth on Sebastian's contribution to TeX Live.

11-16
01:31

TeX and LaTeX software

Phillip Taylor talks about Sebastian's contribution to the TeX and LaTeX software community.

11-16
15:25

Memories of Sebastian

Leonor Barroca, Sebastian's long-term partner, gives some words on Sebastian's and her life together.

11-16
07:09

Humanities Computing at Southampton, and The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Wendy Hall and Les Carr share their memories of work at Southampton University. Nicholas Stanley-Price and Amanda Thursfield, (The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome) share their experiences with working with Sebastian Rahtz. Whilst at Southampton University, Sebastian Rahtz was appointed to teach one of the first courses in Humanities computing. SPQR also formally recorded the monuments of the The Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome in 1984-6 and Nicholas Stanley-Price explains the importance of this unique database for the cemetery and for Humanities researchers.

11-16
14:37

Sebastian's contributions to the Text Encoding Initiative

Lou Burnard, James Cummings and Hugh Cayless discuss Sebastian's contribution to the Text Encoding Initiative live via satellite.

11-16
09:27

Welcome

Donna Kurtz (Professor of Classical Art and Senior Research Fellow of Oxford e-Research Centre) and Anne Trefethen (CIO) introduce the day along with providing some personal insights in working with Sebastian.

11-16
06:28

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