University of Turku
24–26 August 2026

Since the early 2000s, the acceleration of digital technologies has led to an unprecedented abundance of both born‑digital and digitised cultural heritage. Today, digital cultural heritage takes numerous forms, from tweets to scanned manuscripts and 3D models of architectural sites. However, what we can access on a global scale in the digital age remains restricted to relatively scarce resources, concentrated mainly in the Western world. Practices of heritagisation and the designation of heritage raise questions related to the intersections between analogue and digital forms of transmitting knowledge and experiences from the past. Practices of collecting, curating, documenting, and preserving digital data, and therefore choosing what is considered valuable and worth saving for future generations, are tied to (historical) knowledge production, power relations, identity work, and the politics of memory. In the digital age, both online and offline practices of storing, using, and interpreting tangible and intangible cultural heritage are constantly re‑evoking, reshaping, and reimagining our relationship to the past. Accordingly, the broader implications of how available resources shape what is researched and remembered remain vital for the study of digital cultural heritage.

The second DIGHT-Net summer school explores the conceptual framework of digital cultural heritage and promotes interdisciplinary discussion around the theme of theorising digital cultural heritage. It invites PhD researchers to examine how the digitisation of cultural heritage, together with rapidly evolving technologies, both challenges established research paradigms and opens up new avenues for scholarly innovation. The summer school examines newly emerging critical vocabularies and working concepts of digital cultural heritage and uncovers their theoretical underpinnings. Lectures and workshops will address critical discussions surrounding different aspects of digital cultural heritage and explore what are the key concepts of digital cultural heritage of today and tomorrow.

Topics include:

• Processes of heritagisation
• Digital hybridity
• Digital vs. non-digital
• Working with digital archives
• Conceptualising digital cultural heritage
• Data and cultural research
• Critical gameheritage
• 3-D modelling and historical XR experience
• Cultural heritage learning

Programme:

The second DIGHT-Net summer school takes place at the University of Turku in Finland from 24 to 26 August 2026. All lectures and workshops take place in the Arcanum-building (Arcanuminkuja 1) on the University of Turku campus. Lectures will be held in the Aava-hall (1st floor) and workshops will be held in room A270 (2nd floor).

The first day of the summer school is a site visit and introduces multidisciplinary approaches to researching digital cultural heritage, drawing on current projects and networks at the University of Turku in Finland. It highlights emerging methodologies developed within the profiling area Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age (DigiHeri), which supports cross-disciplinary inquiry into how cultural heritage is transformed through digital practices and infrastructures. The speakers represent expertise in language technology, education, legal studies, and history, offering participants a broad view of contemporary research directions.

The second and third days of the summer school are taught by an international team of experts from the University of Amsterdam, the University of Bologna, Tallinn University, and the University of Turku. The sessions examine how the digitisation of cultural heritage both challenges established research paradigms and opens up new avenues for scholarly innovation. Through lectures and workshops, participants engage in critical discussions on various dimensions of digital cultural heritage from working with digital archives to conceptualising digital cultural heritage and theorising new relations with the past.

Monday, 24 August

13:00–13:30   Registration and welcome coffee

13:30–14:00   Hannu Salmi (University of Turku): “Welcome and opening remarks”

14:00–14:30   Veronika Laippala (University of Turku): “From raw text to structured collections – TurkuNLP Register Tools for digital cultural heritage”

14:30–15:00   Lauri Kemppinen (University of Turku): “Producing the Past in Minecraft: Cultural Heritage Learning in a Finnish Late Iron Age Game Environment”

15:00–15:30   Coffee break

15:30–16:00   Anne Alvesalo-Kuusi (University of Turku): “What’s Law got to do with Digital Cultural Heritage?”

16:00–16:30   Kimmo Elo (University of Turku): “Plenary debates as Digital Cultural Heritage”

17:00–18:00   Visit to the Aboa Vetus Ars Nova museum

19:00–21:00   Dinner at Grädda

 

Tuesday, 25 August

09:30–10:30   Anna Maria Lorusso (University of Bologna): Lecture: “Authenticity, reliability and truth in digital archives”

10:30–10:45   Coffee break

10:45–12:00   Sophie Berrebi (University of Amsterdam): Lecture & workshop: “Writing the Digital Archive”

12:00–13:00   Lunch break

13:00–14:00   Marek Tamm (Tallinn University): Lecture: “Digital and post-digital historicities: theorising our new relations with the past”

14:00–14:15   Coffee break

14:15–15:15   Jaakko Suominen (University of Turku): Lecture: “Critical Game Heritage”

15:15–17:00   Francesco Mazzucchelli (University of Bologna) and Hannu Salmi (University of Turku): Workshop: “Building the DIGHT-net e-Lexicon: a co-design workshop”

19:00–22:30   Dinner cruise to Naantali (M/S Rudolfina)

 

Wednesday, 26 August

09:30–10:30   Indrek Ibrus (Tallinn University): Lecture: “What Is Thick Data, and How Can It Be Used in Cultural Research?”

10:30–10:45   Coffee break

10:45–12:00   Christian Olesen (University of Amsterdam): Lecture & workshop: “Working with AV Collections in Digital Scholarship: An Introduction to Current Approaches”

12:00–13:00   Lunch break

13:00–14:00   Indrek Ibrus (Tallinn University): Workshop: “Relations in Data: Why and How Should We Study Them?”

14:00–14:15   Coffee break

14:15–15:15   Giovanni Maddalena (University of Bologna): Lecture: “Documents, Archives, Monuments. The Pragmatist tradition and cultural heritage as a gesture”

15:15–15:30   Concluding group discussion

16:00–17:00   Visit: Panu Savolainen (Aalto University): “An immersive 3D-model of historical cityscape – Turku Aninkainen district and Omnia vincit amor App as an example of historical XR experience”

The full programme, including lecture and workshop abstracts, can be accessed here.