A few days ago, the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities), a federal agency and one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States, provided generous funding to support the Norman Sicily Project (NSP): a prototype web application designed to document the history of Norman rule in Sicily.
“It is with pleasure that I announce being the recipient of generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities,” enthusiastically remarked Dawn Marie Hayes, Ph.D., Professor of Medieval European History at the Department of History of Montclair State University.
The Norman Sicily Project has been awarded a three-year grant in the amount of $349,971 to support the proposal titled: “Documenting the Past, Triaging the Present, and Conserving a Legacy for the Future: A Web App for Sicily’s Norman Heritage”; it is one of the 33 proposals funded under the latest NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program, which received a total of 174 applications.
“Now I am able to lead a team that will build upon the Level I NEH HCRR funding received by the project in 2019,” added Professor Hayes.
The Norman Sicily Project
The Norman Sicily Project (NSP) digitally records on a map the information regarding the monuments erected during the Norman domination period in Sicily, which lasted from 1061 to 1194, arguably the most significant years in the island’s long history.
In doing so, the project provides new interpretations of the complex society that gave rise to these monuments, interpretations made possible by a collaboration between history and STEM and made widely accessible through digital technologies.
With this funding, the team involved in the Norman Sicily Project will be able to develop a fully functional web app optimized for user experience and public interaction, which clearly guides visitors while offering additional classes of monuments beyond the currently contained monasteries (including stability triage for a subset of each), an integrated kinship network of associated individuals, and interpretation of site data.
Flexible and adaptable, the Norman Sicily Project presents a new model for the digital conservation of cultural heritage.
