Stuart James
Assistant Professor in Visual Computing · Department of Computer Science
Durham University
Dr Stuart James is an Assistant Professor in Visual Computing at Durham University and Co-Director of the newly formed Durham Centre for Digital Humanities. Stuart's research focuses on Visual Reasoning to understand the layout of visual content, from iconography, such as sketches, to 3D scene understanding, and their implications for methods of interaction. He was a Co-I on the RePAIR EU FET, DCitizens EU Twinning, BoSS EU Lighthouse, and MEMEX EU H2020 RIA projects, the latter coordinated at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and focused on using cultural heritage technologies to support social inclusion. Stuart has previously held research and postdoctoral positions at IIT, as well as postdoctoral positions at University College London (UCL) and the University of Surrey. At the University of Surrey, Stuart was awarded his PhD on visual information retrieval for sketches. Stuart holds honorary roles at UCL and UCL Digital Humanities, and is an international collaborator with ITI/LARSyS. He also regularly organises the Vision for Art and Culture (VISART) workshop and humanities-oriented tutorials, was Program Chair of the British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) 2021, and co-organises the BMVA Computer Vision Summer School biannually.
Assistant Professor in Visual Computing
Durham University · Durham, UK
Researcher (Assist. Prof.) in Computer Vision
Visual Geometry and Modelling Lab, IIT · Genoa, Italy
Exploring visual reasoning on the MEMEX H2020 and RePAIR FET H2020 EU projects.
Researcher (Assist. Prof.) in Computer Vision for Cultural Heritage
Center for Cultural Heritage Technology, IIT · Venice, Italy
Setting up a new centre for Cultural Heritage Technology.
Honorary Research Associate(honorary)
University College London · London, UK
Postdoctoral Researcher
Visual Geometry and Modelling Lab, IIT · Genoa, Italy
Visual Question Answering in relation to geometry for scene understanding.
Research Associate
University College London · London, UK
3D reconstruction of bas-relief artefacts and analysis of historical book illustrations for the British Museum and British Library.
Research Fellow
University of Surrey · Guildford, UK
EPSRC-funded project exploring digital effects on key life transitions through social media.
PhD in Visual Information Retrieval
University of Surrey
Visual Narratives Free-hand Sketch for Visual Search and Navigation of Video
BSc Computer Science with Games Development
University of Hull
CVPR 2025 Outstanding Reviewer
Nashville, USA
ICIAP 2019 Best Student Paper Award — re-OBJ: Jointly learning the foreground and background for object instance re-identification
Trento, Italy
with Vaibhav Bansal, Stuart James, Alessio Del Bue
IPAS 2018 Best Paper Award — Multi-view Aggregation for Color Naming with Shadow Detection and Removal
Nice, France
with Mohamed Dahy Elkhouly, Stuart James, Alessio Del Bue
BMVA Summer School Poster Competition Runner Up
Manchester, UK
Imagine Cup 2006 Software Design Challenge UK Top 10
Reading, UK
MoniRail KTP
UKRI · Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership
BoSS: Bauhaus of the Seas Sails
European Union · Horizon Europe Lighthouse
€5.0 million · Co-Investigator
DCitizens: Fostering Digital Civics Research and Innovation in Lisbon
European Union · Horizon Europe Twinning
€1.1 million · Co-Investigator
RePAIR: Reconstructing the Past — AI and Robotics Meet Cultural Heritage
European Union · Horizon 2020 FET Open
€3.5 million · Co-Investigator
MEMEX: MEMories and EXperiences for inclusive digital storytelling
European Union · Horizon 2020 RIA
€4 million · Co-Investigator
Puzzle solving for archaeological frescos
Invited Talk · Glasgow, UK
From traditional square puzzles to the real-world challenge of assembling Pompeii frescos — covering deep learning approaches, the shift to point-based representations, and diffusion-based pose estimation.
Comprendere gli archivi culturali digitali, dal passato al presente
Festival Costituzione: Cultura, Ricerca, Scientifica, E Tecnica · San Daniele, Italy
La società crea continuamente archivi digitali tramite la digitalizzazione di vecchi contenuti o nuovi post nei social. L'abilità di sfruttare questi archivi dipende dagli algoritmi di analisi — che ci consentono ora di re-animare video di balli archiviati con nuove coreografie.
Inferring relationships and answering questions on 3D scene geometry
University of Adelaide · Adelaide, Australia
Understanding object relationships in 3D scenes using multi-view information and scene graphs, and answering questions about scene layout using RGBD data.
Visual Narratives: Free-hand Sketch for Visual Search and Navigation of Video
University College London · London, UK
PhD defence-style talk on sketch-based video retrieval, pose retrieval via stickman sketches, and video synthesis through visual narrative storyboards.
Workshop Chair at Vision for Art and Culture (VISART) Workshop @ ECCV 2024
Co-Chair at BMVA Computer Vision Summer School @ Durham University
Co-Chair at BMVA Computer Vision Summer School @ Aberdeen University
Workshop Chair at Vision for Art (VISART) Workshop @ ECCV 2024
Co-Chair at BMVA Computer Vision Summer School @ Durham University
Workshop Chair at Vision for Art (VISART) Workshop @ ECCV 2022
Organiser & Presenter at A picture is worth a thousand words: Image analysis for the Digital Humanities @ DH2022
Program Chair at British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) 2021
Workshop Chair at Vision for Art Workshop @ ECCV 2020
Workshop Chair at Vision for Art Workshop @ ECCV 2018