Staff profile

Assistant Professor in Visual Computing at Durham University. Stuart's research focus is on Visual Reasoning to understand the layout of visual content from Iconography (e.g. Sketches) to 3D Scene understanding and their implications on methods of interaction. He is currently a co-I on the RePAIR EU FET, DCitizens EU Twinning, and BoSS EU Lighthouse. He was a co-I on the MEMEX RIA EU H2020 project coordinated at IIT for increasing social inclusion with Cultural Heritage. Stuart has previously held Researcher & PostDoc positions at IIT as well as PostDocs at University College London (UCL), and the University of Surrey. Also, at the University of Surrey, Stuart was awarded his PhD in visual information retrieval for sketches. Stuart holds an External Scientist at IIT, Honorary roles at UCL and UCL Digital Humanities, and is an international collaborator of ITI/LARSyS. He also regularly organises Vision for Art (VISART) workshops and Humanities-orientated tutorials and was Program Chair at the British Machine Conference (BMVC) 2021.

For full details see my website: https://stuart-james.com

• Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Human Computer Interaction, Digital Humanities

Conference Paper

• Re-assembling the past: The RePAIR dataset and benchmark for real world 2D and 3D puzzle solving
  
  Tsesmelis, T., Palmieri, L., Khoroshiltseva, M., Islam, A., Elkin, G., Itzhak Shahar, O., Scarpellini, G., Fiorini, S., Ohayon, Y., Alali, N., Aslan, S., Morerio, P., Vascon, S., gravina, E., Cristina Napolitano, M., Scarpati, G., zuchtriegel, G., Spühler, A., Fuchs, M. E., … Del Bue, A. (in press). Re-assembling the past: The RePAIR dataset and benchmark for real world 2D and 3D puzzle solving. Presented at Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Datasets and Benchmarks Track, Vancouver, Canada.
• Maps from Motion (MfM): Generating 2D Semantic Maps from Sparse Multi-view Images
  
  Toso, M., Fiorini, S., James, S., & Del Bue, A. (in press). Maps from Motion (MfM): Generating 2D Semantic Maps from Sparse Multi-view Images. ArXiv.
• PaintBranch: Asynchronous Collaborative Art in Virtual Reality
  
  David, A., Giunchi, D., James, S., Steed, A., & Esteves, A. (2025). PaintBranch: Asynchronous Collaborative Art in Virtual Reality. In 2025 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW) (pp. 320-321). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/vrw66409.2025.00306
• 6DGS: 6D Pose Estimation from a Single Image and a 3D Gaussian Splatting Model
  
  Matteo, B., Tsesmelis, T., James, S., Poiesi, F., & Del Bue, A. (2025). 6DGS: 6D Pose Estimation from a Single Image and a 3D Gaussian Splatting Model. In Computer Vision – ECCV 2024 (pp. 420-436). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72943-0_24
• ArtAI4DS: AI Art and Its Empowering Role in Digital Storytelling
  
  Fernandes, T., Nisi, V., Nunes, N., & James, S. (2025). ArtAI4DS: AI Art and Its Empowering Role in Digital Storytelling. In Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2024 (pp. 78-93). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74353-5_6
• PRAGO: Differentiable Multi-View Pose Optimization From Objectness Detections*
  
  Taiana, M., Toso, M., James, S., & Bue, A. D. (2024). PRAGO: Differentiable Multi-View Pose Optimization From Objectness Detections*. In 2024 International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV) (pp. 324-333). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/3dv62453.2024.00117
• IFFNeRF: Initialisation Free and Fast 6DoF pose estimation from a single image and a NeRF model
  
  Bortolon, M., Tsesmelis, T., James, S., Poiesi, F., & Bue, A. D. (2024). IFFNeRF: Initialisation Free and Fast 6DoF pose estimation from a single image and a NeRF model. In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (pp. 1985-1991). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/icra57147.2024.10610425
• Interactive Digital Storytelling Navigating the Inherent Currents of the Diasporic Mind
  
  Nisi, V., Bala, P., Pessoa, M., James, S., & Nunes, N. (2024). Interactive Digital Storytelling Navigating the Inherent Currents of the Diasporic Mind. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 15467, 69-89. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78453-8_5
• Inclusive Digital Storytelling: Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality to re-centre Stories from the Margins
  
  Nisi, V., James, S., Bala, P., Del Bue, A., & Jardim Nunes, N. (2023). Inclusive Digital Storytelling: Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality to re-centre Stories from the Margins. In L. Holloway-Attaway & J. T. Murray (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling: 16th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2023, Kobe, Japan, November 11–15, 2023, Proceedings, Part I. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47655-6_8
• "Connected to the people": Social Inclusion & Cohesion in Action through a Cultural Heritage Digital Tool
  
  Nisi, V., Bala, P., Cesário, V., James, S., Del Bue, A., & Jardim Nunes, N. (2023). "Connected to the people": Social Inclusion & Cohesion in Action through a Cultural Heritage Digital Tool. In J. Nichols (Ed.), Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (p. CSCW2). https://doi.org/10.1145/3610168
• Geolocation of Cultural Heritage using Multi-View Knowledge Graph Embedding
  
  Mohamed, H. A., Vascon, S., Hibraj, F., James, S., Pilutti, D., Del Bue, A., & Pelillo, M. (2023). Geolocation of Cultural Heritage using Multi-View Knowledge Graph Embedding. In J.-J. Rousseau & B. Kapralos (Eds.), International Workshop on Pattern Recognition for Cultural Heritage (PatReCH 2022) at International Conference on Pattern Recognition. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37731-0_12
• Writing with (Digital) Scissors: Designing a Text Editing Tool for Assisted Storytelling using Crowd-Generated Content
  
  Bala, P., James, S., Del Bue, A., & Nisi, V. (2022). Writing with (Digital) Scissors: Designing a Text Editing Tool for Assisted Storytelling using Crowd-Generated Content. In M. Vosmeer & L. Holloway-Attaway (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22298-6_9
• PoserNet: Refining Relative Camera Poses Exploiting Object Detections
  
  Taiana, M., Toso, M., James, S., & Del Bue, A. (2022). PoserNet: Refining Relative Camera Poses Exploiting Object Detections. In European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19827-4_15
• Multi-view 3D Objects Localization from Street-level Scenes
  
  Ahmad, J., Toso, M., Taiana, M., James, S., & Del Bue, A. (2022). Multi-view 3D Objects Localization from Street-level Scenes. In S. Sclaroff, C. Distante, M. Leo, G. M. Farinella, & F. Tombari (Eds.), Image Analysis and Processing – ICIAP 2022. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06430-2_8
• GANzzle: Reframing jigsaw puzzle solving as a retrieval task using generative mental images
  
  Talon, D., Del Bue, A., & James, S. (2022). GANzzle: Reframing jigsaw puzzle solving as a retrieval task using generative mental images. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIP46576.2022.9897553
• Amnesia in the Atlantic: an AI Driven Serious Game on Marine Biodiversity
  
  Dionísio, M., Nisi, V., Xin, J., Bala, P., James, S., & Jardim Nunes, N. (2021). Amnesia in the Atlantic: an AI Driven Serious Game on Marine Biodiversity. In J. Baalsrud Hauge, J. C. Cardoso, L. Roque, & P. A. Gonzalez-Calero (Eds.), International Conference on Entertainment Computing (IFIP-ICEC) - Work In Progress (WIP) Track. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89394-1_35
• re-OBJ:Jointly learning the foreground and background for object instance re-identification
  
  James, S. (2019). re-OBJ:Jointly learning the foreground and background for object instance re-identification. In International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing.
• 3D Sketching in Virtual Reality for immersive model search
  
  Giunchi, D., James, S., & Steed, A. (2018). 3D Sketching in Virtual Reality for immersive model search. In Expressive ’18: Proceedings of the Joint Symposium on Computational Aesthetics and Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling and Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (pp. 1-12). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3229147.3229166
• Multi-view Aggregation for Color Naming with Shadow Detection and Removal
  
  Dahy Elkhouly, M., James, S., & Del Bue, A. (2018). Multi-view Aggregation for Color Naming with Shadow Detection and Removal. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Applications and Systems (IPAS). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IPAS.2018.8708885
• Model Retrieval by 3D Sketching in Immersive Virtual Reality
  
  Giunchi, D., James, S., & Steed, A. (2018). Model Retrieval by 3D Sketching in Immersive Virtual Reality. In 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2018.8446609
• Visual Graphs from Motion (VGfM): Scene understanding with object geometry reasoning
  
  Gay, P., James, S., & Del Bue, A. (2018). Visual Graphs from Motion (VGfM): Scene understanding with object geometry reasoning. In Computer Vision – ACCV 2018 14th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, Perth, Australia, December 2–6, 2018, Revised Selected Papers, Part III. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20893-6_21
• Evolutionary Data Purification for Social Media Classification
  
  James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2016). Evolutionary Data Purification for Social Media Classification. In Proceedings of the 2016 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPR.2016.7900039
• ReEnact: Sketch Based Choreographic Design from Archival Dance Footage
  
  James, S., Fonseca, M. J., & Collomosse, J. (2014). ReEnact: Sketch Based Choreographic Design from Archival Dance Footage. In ICMR ’14: Proceedings of International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (pp. 313-320). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2578726.2578766
• Enhanced Digital Literacy by Multi-modal Data Mining of the Digital Lifespan
  
  Collomosse, J., James, S., Durrant, A., Trujillo-Pisanty, D., Moncur, W., Orzech, K. M., Martindale, S., & Chantler, M. (2014). Enhanced Digital Literacy by Multi-modal Data Mining of the Digital Lifespan. In Proceedings of Digital Economy (DE2014). IEEE.
• Admixed Portrait: Design Intervention to Prompt Reflection on Being Online as a New Parent
  
  Trujillo-Pisanty, D., Durrant, A., Martindale, S., James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2014). Admixed Portrait: Design Intervention to Prompt Reflection on Being Online as a New Parent. In DIS ’14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (pp. 503-512). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2602962
• Interactive Video Asset Retrieval Using Sketched Queries
  
  James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2014). Interactive Video Asset Retrieval Using Sketched Queries. In Proceedings of Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP) (pp. 1-8). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2668904.2668940
• A Particle Filtering approach to salient video object localization
  
  Gray, C., James, S., Collomosse, J., & Asente, P. (2014). A Particle Filtering approach to salient video object localization. In 2014 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIP.2014.7025038
• Markov random fields for sketch based video retrieval
  
  Hu, R., James, S., Wang, T., & Collomosse, J. (2013). Markov random fields for sketch based video retrieval. In ICMR ’13: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM conference on International conference on multimedia retrieval. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2461466.2461510
• Skeletons from sketches of dancing poses
  
  Fonseca, M. J., James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2012). Skeletons from sketches of dancing poses. In 2012 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC). IEEE.
• Annotated Free-Hand Sketches for Video Retrieval Using Object Semantics and Motion
  
  Hu, R., James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2012). Annotated Free-Hand Sketches for Video Retrieval Using Object Semantics and Motion. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 473-484). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27355-1_44

Doctoral Thesis

• Visual narratives : free-hand sketch for visual search and navigation of video
  
  James, S. (2015). Visual narratives : free-hand sketch for visual search and navigation of video [Thesis].

Journal Article

• GANzzle + + : Generative approaches for jigsaw puzzle solving as local to global assignment in latent spatial representations
  
  Talon, D., Del Bue, A., & James, S. (2025). GANzzle + + : Generative approaches for jigsaw puzzle solving as local to global assignment in latent spatial representations. Pattern Recognition Letters, 187, 35-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2024.11.010
• Positional diffusion: Graph-based diffusion models for set ordering
  
  Giuliari, F., Scarpellini, G., Fiorini, S., James, S., Morerio, P., Wang, Y., & Del Bue, A. (2024). Positional diffusion: Graph-based diffusion models for set ordering. Pattern Recognition Letters, 186, 272-278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2024.10.010
• Locality-aware subgraphs for inductive link prediction in knowledge graphs
  
  Mohamed, H. A., Pilutti, D., James, S., Del Bue, A., Pelillo, M., & Vascon, S. (2023). Locality-aware subgraphs for inductive link prediction in knowledge graphs. Pattern Recognition Letters, 167, 90-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2023.02.004
• Locality-aware subgraphs for inductive link prediction in knowledge graphs
  
  Mohamed, H. A., Pilutti, D., James, S., Del Bue, A., Pelillo, M., & Vascon, S. (2023). Locality-aware subgraphs for inductive link prediction in knowledge graphs. Pattern Recognition Letters, 167, 90-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2023.02.004
• Machine Learning for Cultural Heritage: A Survey
  
  Fiorucci, M., Khoroshiltseva, M., Pontil, M., Traviglia, A., Del Bue, A., & James, S. (2020). Machine Learning for Cultural Heritage: A Survey. Pattern Recognition Letters (PR-L), 133, 102-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2020.02.017
• Autonomous 3D reconstruction, mapping and exploration of indoor environments with a robotic arm
  
  Wang, Y., James, S., Stathopoulou, E. K., Beltrán-González, C., Konishi, Y., & Del Bue, A. (2019). Autonomous 3D reconstruction, mapping and exploration of indoor environments with a robotic arm. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 4(4), 3340-3347. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2019.2926676
• Texture Stationarization: Turning Photos into Tilable Textures
  
  Moritz, J., James, S., Haines, T. S., Ritschel, T., & Weyrich, T. (2017). Texture Stationarization: Turning Photos into Tilable Textures. Computer Graphics Forum (Proc. Eurographics), 36(2), 177-188. https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.13117
• Digital photographic practices as expressions of personhood and identity: variations across school leavers and recent retirees
  
  Orzech, K. M., Moncur, W., Durrant, A., James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2017). Digital photographic practices as expressions of personhood and identity: variations across school leavers and recent retirees. Visual Studies, 32(4), 313-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2017.1362959
• Annotated Sketches for Intuitive Video Retrieval
  
  James, S., & Collomosse, J. (2011). Annotated Sketches for Intuitive Video Retrieval. Perception Journal, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.1068/ava11