Bernard Frischer is the author of five books and many articles on virtual heritage and on the Classical world and its survival. He received his B.A. in Classics from Wesleyan University in 1971 and his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Heidelberg in 1975. He taught Classics at UCLA from 1976 to 2004. Since then he has been Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Virginia, where he also serves as Director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. He has been a guest professor at the University of Pennsylvania (1993), the University of Bologna (1994), and held the post of Professor-in-Charge of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (2000-01). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and he has won research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1981, 1996) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (1997). From 1996 to 2003 he directed the excavations of Horace's Villa sponsored by the American Academy in Rome, and from 1996 to 2004 he was founding director of the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory. The lab was one of the first in the world to use 3D computer modeling to reconstruct cultural heritage sites. Frischer has overseen many significant modeling projects, including "Rome Reborn,” the virtual recreation of the entire city of ancient Rome within the Aurelian Walls. In 2005 he was given the Pioneer Award of the International Society for Virtual Systems and Multimedia.
Right: Bernard Frischer and his wife, Jane Crawford, at Castel Gandolfo, Italy. Jane Crawford, is a Professor in UVA's Classics Department.
Research Interests
Digital humanities, digital archaeology, virtual reality, urban simulation, visualization, stylometrics, Roman archaeology, urban history of Rome, Golden Latin literature.