Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory
2 - 4 April 2025, Senate House, University of London & Online
© Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory, University of London
Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory
Digital research in the arts and humanities has traditionally focused on digitised objects and archives. However, born-digital cultural materials that originate and circulate across a range of formats and platforms are rapidly expanding and raising new opportunities and challenges for research, archiving and collecting communities. Collecting, accessing and sharing born-digital objects and data presents a range of complex technical, legal and ethical challenges that, if unaddressed, threaten the archival and research futures of these vital cultural materials and records of the 21st century. Moreover, the environments, contexts and formats through which born-digital records are mediated necessitate reconceptualising the materials and practices we associate with cultural heritage and memory.
Research and practitioner communities working with born-digital materials are growing and their interests are varied, from digital cultures and intangible cultural heritage to web archives, electronic literatures and social media. This international conference seeks to further an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral discussion on how the born-digital transforms what and how we research in the humanities.
We invite contributions from researchers and practitioners involved in any way in accessing or developing born-digital collections and archives, and interested in exploring the novel and transformative effects of born-digital cultural heritage. Areas of particular (but not exclusive) interest include:
A broad range of born-digital objects and formats:
- Web-based and networked heritage, including but not limited to websites, emails, social media platforms/content and other forms of personal communication
- Software-based heritage, such as video games, mobile applications, computer-based artworks and installations, including approaches to archiving, preserving and understanding their source code
- Born-digital narrative and artistic forms, such as electronic literature and born-digital art collections
- Emerging formats and multimodal born-digital cultural heritage
- Community-led and personal born-digital archives
- Physical, intangible and digitised cultural heritage that has been remediated in a transformative way in born-digital formats and platforms
Theoretical, methodological and creative approaches to engaging with born-digital collections and archives:
- Approaches to researching the born-digital mediation of cultural memory
- Histories and historiographies of born-digital technologies
- Creative research uses and creative technologist approaches to born-digital materials
- Experimental research approaches to engaging with born-digital objects, data and collections
- Methodological reflections on using digital, quantitative and/or qualitative methods with born-digital objects, data and collections
- Novel approaches to conceptualising born-digital and/or hybrid cultural heritage and archives
Critical approaches to born-digital archiving, curation and preservation:
- Critical archival studies and librarianship approaches to born-digital collections
- Preserving and understanding obsolete media formats, including but not limited to CD-ROMs, floppy disks and other forms of optical and magnetic media
- Preservation challenges associated with the platformisation of digital cultural production
- Semantic technology, ontologies, metadata standards, markup languages and born-digital curation
- Ethical approaches to collecting and accessing ‘difficult’ born-digital heritage, such as traumatic or offensive online materials
- Risks and opportunities of generative AI in the context of born-digital archiving
Access, training and frameworks for born-digital archiving and collecting:
- Institutional, national and transnational approaches to born-digital archiving and collecting
- Legal, trustworthy, ethical and environmentally sustainable frameworks for born-digital archiving and collecting, including attention to cybersecurity and safety concerns
- Access, skills and training for born-digital research and archives
- Inequalities of access to born-digital collecting and archiving infrastructures, including linguistic, geographic, economic, legal, cultural, technological and institutional barriers
digital research, arts, humanities, archives, born-digital material, born-digital objects, data, cultural materials, records, cultural heritage i interdisciplinarity
