Michael Ashley

Michael Ashley is currently Development Director for Cultural Heritage Imaging, a California not-for-profit working on state-of-the-art imaging and semantic management tools for digital conservation. He received his Ph.D. at the UC Berkeley, where he continued to work as staff in the Office of the Chief Information Officer and Data Services.

He co-founded several initiatives, including the award winning Open Knowledge and the Public Interest (okapi.berkeley.edu), and the Media Vault Program, which seeks to develop digital preservation frameworks for research and scholarship. Dr. Ashley has more than 16 years of experience in cultural heritage informatics management and education.

He is Chair of the IT and Communications Task Force for the World Archaeological Congress and on the Society for Historical Archaeology Website Advisory, and is specifically interested in developing international standards for the preservation of cultural and digital heritage.

An archaeologist by training, he was the Media Team specialist for the Çatalhöyük Research Project for more than 7 years and has worked on several heritage preservation projects worldwide. Email: archaeology@mac.com