Perspectives and Challenges
Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage: Open Panel Discussion
The open panel discussion dealt with digital access to cultural heritage and brought together five experts from humanities research, museum studies and cultural administration. Daniel Smail (Harvard) emphasized the need for an open infrastructure for accessing research data. Chiara Zuanni (Graz) pointed out the important coordination work between academic institutions and memory institutions for joint research into cultural heritage. Bernhard Heil (Salzburg) highlighted the use of digital offerings in exhibitions as an important field of activity for contemporary curating. Ulrike Tanzer (Innsbruck) emphasized the political and infrastructural challenges in dealing with cultural heritage in the digital age. Günter Mühlberger (Innsbruck) criticized the still hesitant use of digital methods in the humanities and cultural studies despite having very mature AI models and proven computer-aided processes at their disposal and called for more openness, interdisciplinarity and support in the specialist communities. Christina Antenhofer (Salzburg) emphasized the need to set up digital help desks at universities to support research and teaching.
Resources & Tools
- DALME (Documentary Archeology of Late Medieval Europe) – platform to researching digitized inventories from the Late Middle Ages
- Transkribus – AI powered platform for handwritten text recognition of historical documents
- DHInfra.at – cross-institutional project to build an infrastructure in Austria, that connects tools, documentation, and resources for the Digital Humanities
Elisabeth Anna Tangerner, Tagungsbericht: Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage: Perspectives and Challenges, in: H-Soz-Kult, 07.01.2025, https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-152044. (conference report)
Karoline Döring: Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage. Perspectives and Challenges. Projekttagung über den Einsatz digitaler Methoden zur Erschließung von europäischem Kulturerbe, 19.–20. September 2024 in Innsbruck, in: Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte, https://doi.org/10.58079/13fn7 (general review).
For further information see the conference website.
A German version of this text was published as part of the general overview by Karoline Döring; see https://doi.org/10.58079/13fn7
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Karoline Döring (May 29, 2025). Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage. VIRMA. Retrieved September 10, 2026 from https://virma.hypotheses.org/1206