This online series explores various dimensions of digitality in relation to cultural heritage through expert presentations and panel discussions. Over the course of four online workshops, we will examine how the digitisation of physical cultural heritage archives transforms our relationship with the past, the ethical and ecological sustainability issues that arise, the novel forms of knowledge that are facilitated, and how the development of digital heritage fosters communities that engage with the past.

More information about the speakers, programme and web links will follow in due course.

Workshop 1: Creation of the Digital Archive

Date: Friday, February 21, 2025

Join us as we delve into the intricate process of composing a digital archive—a task that involves complex selection processes, making critical decisions about what to include and exclude. Digitisation transforms physical sources into numerical data, a process in which some features of the sources are lost, while new possibilities for data processing are gained. Additionally, choices regarding metadata and data structure can significantly affect the findability and usability of the digitised data. These choices raise important questions, such as: How can we ensure the transmission of inherent features to digitised archives? And how do we maintain a sufficiently comprehensive representation of the past? And when considering digitising personal collections, like the Juri Lotman and Zara Mints archive, what are the best practices that should be considered?

Workshop 2: Digital and Ecological Sustainability

Date: Friday, April 25, 2025

Digital cultural heritage faces two critical sustainability challenges. On one hand, its rapid revolution makes digital artefacts prone to obsolescence, necessitating continuous format conversions to remain accessible. On the other hand, the energy demands of digitisation, preservation, online querying, and data processing raise pressing ecological concerns, as these technical tools require scarce natural resources. In this workshop, we examine strategies for the sustainable design of the process of maintaining digital cultural heritage. How can we design energy-efficient infrastructures and practices while ensuring the long-term preservation and security of our cultural heritage? What practices can we adopt to create sustainable pipelines and promote green computing? Join us to explore pathways to a more sustainable digital future.

Workshop 3: Digital Representations of Information

Date: Friday, September 19, 2025

During this workshop, we delve into how the digitisation of cultural heritage can open new possibilities in terms of scale, arrangement and linking of data, which can transform how we perceive and analyse the past. From digital data, we can extract dynamics over time, repetitions, connections, and continuums of similarities. In this workshop, we address the potential and pitfalls of computationally examining digitalised cultural heritage materials, with examples of innovative digital collection interfaces and cutting-edge methodologies in historical research. As such, we explore the best ways of representing digital archives to enable users’ meaningful engagement, and how we can create connections between related archives.

Workshop 4: Memory Communities and Cultural Heritage – Interacting with the Digital Archive

Date: Friday, November 21, 2025

The formation of cultural heritage is inherently a community-forming activity, wherein the involved communities define what is important to them and shape their identities accordingly. Online communities may interact differently with digital heritage than with traditional physical archives, as the multiplicity of meaning-making contexts in digital archives presents both opportunities and challenges. This workshop addresses cultural heritage as a community and examines online communities related to cultural heritage. We will explore the types of digital memory communities that exist and how they interact with digital cultural heritage. How does online interaction shape knowledge and group identities in relation to the past? How can we balance academic and popular uses of digital cultural heritage to enhance user experience? We will also discuss innovative methods to improve user engagement, such as chatting with an archivist or using interactive bots, to provide access to information beyond what is represented online.