Author: Joan Murphy

Who is Responsible for the Archives? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Ethics in a Digital Age [June 26, Birmingham, online/in-person]

Who is Responsible for the Archives? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Ethics in a Digital Age

When: Friday 26 June 2026, 9:00–20:00
Where: Aston University, Susan Cadbury Lecture Theatre, and online

Archives are vital repositories for preserving the past, for documenting the present, and for building memories and legacies for the future. Although they hold relevance to everybody’s history and affect society as a whole, they have long been the purview of a limited group of archivists and historians. In recent years, this has begun to change: archives, both as documents and as repositories, have received increasing attention from scholars across diverse disciplines and also from the broader public.

However, if questions of representation, digital transformation, and long-term preservation have become central to contemporary debates, issues related to ethics remain often limited to legal compliance or confined to a limited group of specialists. Building on previous debates including the US 2018 National Forum on Ethics & Archiving the Web and the ICA’s 2022 Ethics and Archives Online Discussion, and also on the ARA’s ongoing work in this area, this conference seeks to expand this discussion by bringing together experts and practitioners from all fields.

Practical Information and Registration

Draft Programme: https://www.aston.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2026-06/AUAC-2026-conference-programme-ONGOING.pdf

Digital Medieval Studies Institute (DMSI) at Leeds [10 July, Leeds, in person]

Registrations for the Digital Medieval Studies Institute (DMSI) at Leeds will close on Wednesday, 10 June 2026.

In partnership with the University of Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies (IMS), University of Leeds Libraries, and Digital Medievalist, the Digital Medieval Studies Institute (DMSI) presents a full-day programme featuring workshops on digital scholarly methods specifically tailored for medievalists.

DMSI UK will take place on Friday, 10 July 2026 in conjunction with the International Medieval Congress (IMC), University of Leeds. We still have a number of places in the following five workshops:

  • TEI for Beginners: Encoding Text and Extracting Data (Sebastian Dows-Miller, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, University College London)
  • Using Local LLMs and VLMs: Prompting, Structuring, and Automating with Medieval Data (Delphine Demelas, Southampton Digital Humanities, University of Southampton)
  • Nodegoat Curious: Building a Custom Relational Database for Your Research (Pim van Bree, LAB1100; Geert Kessels, LAB1100; Jesse W. Torgerson, Wesleyan University)
  • Artificial Intelligence: Image Analysis Applied to Medieval Manuscripts (Dominique Stutzmann, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris)
  • Manuscript Materiality in a Digital World (Dot Porter, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries) 

Please note that if you have already registered for the IMC, you can add DMSI to your existing registration. If you are only interested in participating in DMSI, there are no additional late registration fees for DMSI. For more information and registration, please consult the DMSI UK webpage.

Computational approaches to visual and material culture [June 2/3, Oxford, in person – FREE ]

Computational approaches to visual and material culture

Join us for a two-day thematic research event on computational approaches to visual and material culture at Oxford’s Weston Library!

2 June 9:30am-5:00pm to 3 June 9.30am-5:00pm

In-person event: Centre for Digital Scholarship, Weston Library, Oxford

Free event and open to all. Registration required, limited places available. Please follow the link below to register.

Register on Eventbrite

Data/Culture, the Centre for Digital Scholarship (Bodleian Libraries), Digital Scholarship @Oxford, and Mapping the Arts and Humanities (SAS, London) are hosting a two-day thematic research event exploring new ways of working with images, objects, and performances. The event focuses on developing research questions and approaches, using existing tools and resources. Participants will work collaboratively in small groups, supported by Research Software Engineers, and have the opportunity to develop a research idea further through a prize of dedicated technical collaboration. No prior coding experience is required.

Who is this for?

This event is designed for:

  • Arts and Humanities researchers (scholars and postgraduate students)
  • those working with images, objects, archives, or performance materials
  • those interested in exploring new research methods
  • those developing or planning research projects or grant applications

What do you need?

  • An interest in your research question
  • (Optional) a dataset or collection you work with
  • A laptop is desirable but not essential

You do NOT need:

  • coding experience
  • prior knowledge of tools
  • technical expertise

UK-IE DHA Community Interest Group Call [Now Open]

UK-IE DHA Community Interest Group Call

UK-IE DHA is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for new Community Interest Groups (CIGs).

CIGs are community-driven groups organised around a shared research interest, a community of practice, or a key issue within digital humanities. They are central to our aim of fostering a more inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable community.

We warmly invite proposals for new groups. Before applying, please read the full call and complete the application form available here: https://digitalhumanities-uk-ie.org/2026/05/14/cfp-new-cigs-2026/

Key information

  • Deadline: 23:59 (GMT), Monday 29 June 2026
  • Format: PDF submission via email to uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk
  • Notification of outcomes: Friday 24 July 2026
  • Similar proposals may be combined where appropriate

About CIGs

CIGs are flexible and community-led, designed to evolve alongside the field. They:

  • run initially for at least 18 months
  • are open to unlimited participation
  • are shaped by the needs of their members
  • foster communities of practice across the UK and Ireland

We currently have 5 CIGs and will add up to 5 new groups in this round.

Support available

Successful groups receive:

  • access to the CIG Funding Scheme (expanded via thanks to our recently announced UKRI grant)
  • promotion via our channels
  • a dedicated presence on our website
  • opportunities to participate in Association events
  • access to peer support via the Collective
  • opportunities for collaboration and advocacy

If you have any questions, please contact uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk.

MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference – Media and Sustainability [Calls closes May 25th]

MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference

We are pleased to say that due to exceptional demand, we are extending the deadline to submit an abstract for the 2026 MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference, which will take place on 9th September 2026 in the Minghella Studios, University of Reading. The new deadline is Monday 25th May 2026.

This year’s theme is Media and Sustainability and invites postgraduate researchers to explore how media industries, forms, cultures, and research practices endure, adapt, resist or reimagine themselves within unstable or emerging environments. We also encourage reflection on the sustainability of academic and creative labour, and the infrastructures that support media work.  

Participants are encouraged to interpret the conference theme broadly and creatively. Submissions from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives are warmly welcomed, including practice-based work.  

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:  

  • Sustainable media industries: policy, production cultures, funding, and independent practice. 
  • Sustainable creative and research methodologies: slow scholarship, decolonial and feminist methods, ethics of care, collaboration and community partnership. 
  • Environmental sustainability and media: climate communication, ecocinema, eco-media, green production, and environmental representation.  
  • Sustainable archives and preservation: memory, heritage, obsolescence, and care for audiovisual materials.  
  • Sustainable digital technologies and infrastructures: platforms, AI, media infrastructure, resource extraction, and the environmental costs of data.  
  • Sustainable identities and communities: queer, Indigenous, diasporic, and disabled media-making. Visibility, survival, and continuity.  
  • Sustaining the self: wellbeing, burnout, emotional labour, and the lived realities of postgraduate research.   

In recognition of the diverse ways postgraduate researchers work and communicate research, we invite proposals in a range of formats, including:  

  • Paper presentations (15 minutes) 
  • Panel proposals (typically 3-5 named contributors) 
  • Practice-based or creative contributions, including film, audiovisual work, performance or artistic practice 

We particularly welcome work-in-progress and contributions from early-stage postgraduate researchers.  

Submission deadline: Monday 25th May 2026 at midday (GMT)

Submission link: Microsoft Form

Further details can be found here. Alternatively, feel free to email us with any questions.