On December 1, 2025, the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Hub (DIGHT-Hub) was officially launched at Tallinn University. The event brought project partners, academics, and Estonian cultural heritage professionals and stakeholders to inaugurate this new infrastructure for digital cultural heritage research.

After Prof. Daniele Monticelli (Tallinn University) opened the event and offered a short introduction of the Hub, Prof. Katrin Niglas, Vice-Rector for Research of Tallinn University, addressed the audience. She emphasized the university’s mission to make high-value cultural heritage available and accessible through digital means. She stressed the importance of international collaboration for the university and Estonia, expressing hope that the Hub would become a permanent structure for collaboration and research. Thereafter, Uku Lember, Director of the School of Humanities, situated the Hub within TLU’s broader digital and AI turn, highlighting the school’s commitment to digital humanities and noting the potential of increased encounters between the intellectual legacies of Lotman and Eco that the DIGHT-Net project envisions.

Thereafter, Prof. Marek Tamm (Tallinn University) presented the strengths of the DIGHT-Net project, which, going beyond the realisation of the Hub and the digitising the collections of Yuri Lotman and Zara Mints, will also contribute to methodological and conceptual innovation in the deeply theoretical and political matter of digital memory and heritage. By training a new generation of digital heritage professionals and fostering collaboration, the Hub will provide a space to look at the economic, political and social considerations shaping digital cultural heritage head on. Complementing these insights, Daniele Monticelli specified in his talk how the Hub will achieve these aims through novel educational initiatives, resource development, public outreach and knowledge sharing activities.

The afternoon featured a roundtable on the challenges, opportunities and perspectives on digital cultural heritage in transition. The discussion was moderated by Merit Maran (Tallinn University) and featured Eva Näripea (National Archives of Estonia), Prof. Francesco Mazzucchelli (University of Bologna), Prof. Hannu Salmi (University of Turku), Prof. Ihab Saloul (University of Amsterdam), Prof. Indrek Ibrus (Tallinn University), and Pille Runnel (Estonian National Museum). This stimulating discussion touched on the necessity of approach digital heritage through multi-perspectivity, and how to enlarge these perspectives by reaching not yet addressed audiences. It dwelled on the changing intelligibility of the archive, and its emerging function as a mass medium. Moreover, the conversation addressed AI’s potential for metadata repair and handwritten text recognition while warning about maintaining the identifiability of AI interventions and the transparency of the models used. The discussion moreover offered critical perspectives on the epistemology of digitization, cautioning against losing sight of humanities’ hermeneutic foundations while emphasizing the politics and ethics of digital knowledge production.

After the conclusion of the formal event, a reception was held in celebration of the launch of the Hub. During the reception, participants could visit the exhibition ‘Between Paper and Pixel: The Lotman-Mints Archive in Transition.’

Watch the full recording of the event on our YouTube channel.

Marjolein Uittenbogaard