BEAR Software services are provided by the
Research Software Group in
Advanced Research Computing.
Dr Catherine Smith
Senior Research Software Engineer
After completing a PhD in Theology at the University of Birmingham, Cat stayed at Birmingham but switched to Computer Science and completed an MSc conversion course the following year. She worked in Research and RSE-like positions in Liverpool and Nottingham before returning to work as research fellow and technical officer at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) in the Theology department at Birmingham in 2011. This involved developing tools to work with religious texts transmitted in ancient manuscripts, early translations and indirect tradition. Although most of ITSEE's work has focussed on the New Testament in Greek and Latin, Cat has also worked on projects including the Virtual Shakespeare Performance Archive, the Multimedia Yasna (a Zoroastrian ritual text) and the Estoria de Espanna (a medieval Spanish Chronicle).
Cat has been a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute and a Software Carpentries instructor since 2019. She joined the Research Software Group in April 2024.