Professor uses pocket-sized cameras to recover erased history

Helen Davies has spent the last two decades working at the intersection of medieval studies and data science, a combination that rarely fits neatly into a single university department.

Her career began in the academic in-between spaces, leading her to co-found the Center for Research Frontiers in the Digital Humanities at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs from 2020 to 2025. That role involved collaborating with scholars across Latin, anthropology, and digital humanities. In 2025, Davies accepted a joint appointment with UNC Charlotte’s Department of English and the School of Data Science. She described the move as finding an academic home where interdisciplinary research is built into the job structure rather than being an afterthought.

The shift to Charlotte allowed her to expand her use of multispectral imaging, a technique that uses specialized cameras and light to recover text that has been damaged, erased, or made illegible. While the method is often applied to ancient manuscripts, Davies focuses on what she calls everyman history, including local documents that archives often overlook. During a visit to an archive in Boulder, she used the technology to recover names from manumission documents where the names of enslaved people had been scratched out.

To make this technology accessible to communities beyond specialized laboratories, Davies developed a portable imaging kit. The device uses modified point-and-shoot cameras and costs under $500. It fits in a coat pocket and does not require a dark room for operation. Her goal is to provide these kits for free to local historians, ensuring that no prior technical knowledge is necessary to preserve regional records.

This summer, Davies received a seed grant from the School of Data Science to finalize the software behind her imaging system. She worked with co-principal investigator Marco Scipioni, data science Ph.D. student Daniel Sanky, and English master’s student Aubrey Chapman to refine the Python code and test its usability. Chapman, who has an undergraduate background in English, German, and history, found that the project deepened her interest in digital humanities while providing hands-on technical experience.

Davies is also nearing completion of a digital edition of the Vercelli Mappa Mundi, a medieval wall map located in Italy. The project builds on her dissertation research regarding how medieval maps transmit knowledge. She returned to Vercelli over the summer to complete three weeks of imaging and archival work. Additionally, she recently traveled to Germany to image palimpsested Irish materials, manuscripts where older texts were scraped off and overwritten. Her team has identified two different undertexts from the 6th to 8th century AD, including one written in large Latin capitals without spaces or punctuation.

Looking ahead, Davies is preparing to lead a summer institute funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The program will train librarians, archivists, and scholars from across the country to preserve materials damaged by natural disasters or neglect. Participants will return to their home institutions with their own imaging kits. Davies plans to adapt this model for collaborations with Appalachian communities affected by Hurricane Helene, local Charlotte archives, and historical institutions throughout the Southeast.

She will also speak at TEDxUNC Charlotte in 2027 and has been selected for a CHESS Initiative on Very Important Questions Research Award alongside colleague Carlin Crisanti. A book proposal on medieval maps is currently under review. Through these efforts, Davies aims to place affordable digital methods in the hands of institutions that hold cultural heritage materials, reducing the dependence on a small number of highly specialized laboratories.