Skulls, skin and names: The ethics of managing heritage collections data online
Speaker: Rebecca Kahn (University of Vienna)
Date: Wednesday March 5, 2025. 15:00–16:15 GMT. Online only.
The management of sensitive cultural heritage materials is a highly regulated aspect of museum practice, governed by institutional, national and international best-practice guidelines. For digital collections, however, there is far less guidance, and digital surrogates of sensitive objects can be found easily all over the web. This discussion will highlight the ethical challenges of managing the digitised images and records of materials which, for ethical reasons, are no longer shown in galleries. With a focus on data harvested from Europeana, we will discuss the implications and challenges of managing a small number of highly significant objects alongside the commitment to FAIR data practices, scholarly openness and the preservation mandate that exists in most cultural heritage institutions.
The Material Digital Humanities seminar is organised by Gabriel Bodard (Digital Humanities Research Hub, University of London, UK) and Chiara Palladino (Department of Classics, Furman University, USA) in 2025. This seminar series will present a range of discussions around materiality and the research possibilities offered by digital methods and approaches. Beyond just the value of digitization and computational research to the study of material culture, we are especially interested in theoretical and digital approaches to the question of materiality itself. We do not restrict ourselves to any period of history or academic discipline, but want to encourage interdisciplinarity and collaborative work, and the valuable exchange of ideas enabled by cross-pollination of languages, areas of history, geography and cultures.
All welcomeThis event is free to attend, but booking is required. It will be held online with details about how to join the virtual event being circulated via email to registered attendees 24 hours in advance.
This page was last updated on 6 March 2025
