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Event

Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory

Event information>

Dates
to
Location

Senate House and Online

Institute

Digital Humanities Research Hub

The Call for Proposals is now closed. Notifications of acceptances were sent at the beginning of September - if you have not received an email about your submission, please contact the Organising Committee at borndigital@sas.ac.uk.

Information about the conference schedule and registration costs will be released at the end of October.

Digital research in the arts and humanities has traditionally focused on digitised objects and archives. However, born-digital cultural materials that originate and circulate across a range of formats and platforms are rapidly expanding and raising new opportunities and challenges for research, archiving and collecting communities. Collecting, accessing and sharing born-digital objects and data presents a range of complex technical, legal and ethical challenges that, if unaddressed, threaten the archival and research futures of these vital cultural materials and records of the 21st century. Moreover, the environments, contexts and formats through which born-digital records are mediated necessitate reconceptualising the materials and practices we associate with cultural heritage and memory.

Research and practitioner communities working with born-digital materials are growing and their interests are varied, from digital cultures and intangible cultural heritage to web archives, electronic literatures and social media. This international conference seeks to further an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral discussion on how the born-digital transforms what and how we research in the humanities.

We invite contributions from researchers and practitioners involved in any way in accessing or developing born-digital collections and archives, and interested in exploring the novel and transformative effects of born-digital cultural heritage. Areas of particular (but not exclusive) interest include:

  1. A broad range of born-digital objects and formats:
    Web-based and networked heritage, including but not limited to websites, emails, social media platforms/content and other forms of personal communication
    Software-based heritage, such as video games, mobile applications, computer-based artworks and installations, including approaches to archiving, preserving and understanding their source code
    Born-digital narrative and artistic forms, such as electronic literature and born-digital art collections
    Emerging formats and multimodal born-digital cultural heritage
    Community-led and personal born-digital archives 
    Physical, intangible and digitised cultural heritage that has been remediated in a transformative way in born-digital formats and platforms
  2. Theoretical, methodological and creative approaches to engaging with born-digital collections and archives:
    Approaches to researching the born-digital mediation of cultural memory
    Histories and historiographies of born-digital technologies
    Creative research uses and creative technologist approaches to born-digital materials
    Experimental research approaches to engaging with born-digital objects, data and collections
    Methodological reflections on using digital, quantitative and/or qualitative methods with born-digital objects, data and collections
    Novel approaches to conceptualising born-digital and/or hybrid cultural heritage and archives
  3. Critical approaches to born-digital archiving, curation and preservation:
    Critical archival studies and librarianship approaches to born-digital collections
    Preserving and understanding obsolete media formats, including but not limited to CD-ROMs, floppy disks and other forms of optical and magnetic media
    Preservation challenges associated with the platformisation of digital cultural production
    Semantic technology, ontologies, metadata standards, markup languages and born-digital curation
    Ethical approaches to collecting and accessing ‘difficult’ born-digital heritage, such as traumatic or offensive online materials
    Risks and opportunities of generative AI in the context of born-digital archiving
  4. Access, training and frameworks for born-digital archiving and collecting:
    Institutional, national and transnational approaches to born-digital archiving and collecting
    Legal, trustworthy, ethical and environmentally sustainable frameworks for born-digital archiving and collecting, including attention to cybersecurity and safety concerns
    Access, skills and training for born-digital research and archives
    Inequalities of access to born-digital collecting and archiving infrastructures, including linguistic, geographic, economic, legal, cultural, technological and institutional barriers

More information can be found in the call for proposals.

Virtual Participation, Languages and Accessibility

The conference will primarily be an in-person event. However, we recognise the importance of remote participation to support inclusive access. We therefore plan to livestream portions of the programme for attendees to view online, and which will also be made available to view after conference. We will do our best to ensure that both in-person and virtual participants will have an enriching and enjoyable experience.

There will be the option for some presentations to be made online. Please indicate on your submission whether you intend to present in-person or online, and please note we have a more limited capacity for online presenters.

The working language of the conference will be English but within our capacity we would like to ensure the inclusion of those who would prefer to present in other languages. To support cross-language engagement, those who would like to present in another language will be asked to pre-record their presentations in the language of their choice and the organising committee will coordinate and cover the costs of translation into English prior to the event. In order to facilitate the peer review process, we would however ask that submissions be made in English or in one of the languages familiar to the organising committee, which are French, Spanish and Italian.

If you have any questions or additional accessibility recommendations or requirements, please contact the Organising Committee at borndigital@sas.ac.uk.

Organising Committee

  • Gabriel Bodard (School of Advanced Study)
  • Beatrice Cannelli (School of Advanced Study)
  • Michael Donnay (School of Advanced Study)
  • Paula Granados Garcia (Endangered Material Knowledge Programme)
  • Helle Strandgaard Jensen (Aarhus University)
  • Anna-Maria Sichani (School of Advanced Study)
  • Naomi Wells (School of Advanced Study)
  • Stella Wisdom (British Library)

Programme Committee

Abi L Glen - Our Heritage, Our Stories (OHOS)
Alice Bell - Sheffield Hallam University
Amy Spencer - Bath Spa University
Anat Ben-David - Open University of Israel
Andy Corrigan - Cambridge Digital Humanities
Anisa Hawes - Programming Historian
Anna Mladentseva - UCL/V&A
Arran J Rees - University of Leeds
Bethany Johnstone - UCL
Caio Mello - School of Advanced Study
Callum McKean - British Library
Chijioke Okorie - University of Pretoria
CJ Chen - Nanjing University
Claire Taylor - University of Liverpool
Clare George - Senate House Library
Edward King - University of Bristol
Emily Maemura - University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign
Gábor Palkó - Eötvös Loránd University
Gustavo Gomez-Mejia - Université de Tours, Prim
Hannah Smyth - UCL
Helena Byrne - British Library
İdil Galip - University of Amsterdam
Isabelle Gribomont - Université catholique de Louvain/Royal Library of Belgium (KBR)
Jane Winters - School of Advanced Study
Jenny Bunn - The National Archives
Jenny Cearns - UCL
Jessica Ogden - University of Bristol
Jo Baines - UCL Special Collections
Jody Butterworth - British Library
Joseph Ford - School of Advanced Study
Juan-José Boté-Vericad - Universitat de Barcelona
JuEunhae Knox - University of Sheffield
Katie Mackinnon - University of Toronto
Kelly Foster - Whose Knowledge?
Kyounghwa Yonnie Kim - Kanda University of International Studies
Laura Molloy - CODATA: the Committee on Data of the International Science Council, Paris
Lisa Griffith - Digital Repository of Ireland
Lucy Evans - Senate House Library
Lyle Skains - Bournemouth University
Max Odsbjerg Pedersen - Royal Danish Library
Michael Popham - Digital Preservation Coalition
Nanna Bonde Thylstrup - University of Copenhagen
Natalie Kane - V&A
Neil Stewart - School of Advanced Study
Nick Webber - Birmingham City University
Niels Brügger - Aarhus University
Paul Gooding - University of Glasgow
Peter Webster - University of Southampton
Pip Willcox - Lambeth Palace Library
Pragya Dhital - School of Advanced Study
Reham Hosny - University of Cambridge/Minia University
Rhiannon Lewis - School of Advanced Study/University of Glasgow
Richard Nevell - Wikimedia UK
Rosario Rogel-Salazar - Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México
Samya Brata Roy - IIT Jodhpur/School of Advanced Study
Sara Namusoga-Kaale - Makerere University
Sara Thomas - Wikimedia UK
Saskia Huc-Hepher - University of Westminster
Shani Evenstein Sigalov - School of Advanced Study/Tel Aviv University
Susan Aasman - University of Gronigen
Thea Pitman - University of Leeds
Thorsten Ries - The University of Texas, Austin
Valérie Schafer - University of Luxembourg
Vicky Garnett - DARIAH-EU/Trinity College Dublin
Yannis Tzitzikas - University of Crete

This page was last updated on 8 October 2024