Cultural Heritage

Galaxy – Digital Research Methods Training [Free, online, register by May 16]

Galaxy – Digital Research Methods Training online

We would like to draw your attention to the Galaxy Training Academy 2026, a free, international training programme focused on open, reproducible digital research methods, with particular relevance for arts, humanities, and cultural heritage research.

This training is relevant if you:

• work with textual, audiovisual, or cultural heritage data;

• are interested in practical approaches to digital humanities, text analysis, or machine learning;

• would like access to shared, non‑commercial computational infrastructure for research and teaching experiments;

• are interested in FAIR research practices for the digital arts and humanities.

About the Galaxy Training Academy 2026

The Academy is organised by the Galaxy Training Network, a long‑running international community that develops and delivers training for the Galaxy open‑source research infrastructure, which is widely used and supported across the global research community.

Dates: 18–22 May 2026 (Registration deadline: 16 May)

Format: Fully asynchronous (no live sessions)

Cost: Free

More details: https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/events/2026-05-18-galaxy-academy.html

The Academy is open to researchers at all career stages, including postgraduate students, doctoral researchers and early‑career academics. 

Participants work through a structured set of video‑based and text‑based tutorials at their own pace. No prior experience with Galaxy is required, although more experienced users are also welcome.

Topics

Recommended tracks for community members include: Digital Humanities; From Zero to Hero with Python Machine Learning.

Indicative topics in the Digital Humanities track include:

• Introduction to Digital Humanities workflows in Galaxy

• Researching cultural data using OpenRefine

• Text mining Chinese newspaper archives

• Automated transcription of audio and video materials

INFINITY Project Survey – Cultural Heritage Collections (re)use [Deadline April 30]

INFINITY Project Surveys – Cultural Heritage Collections (re)use

Do you manage or reuse cultural heritage collections in your work? Then take one of our INFINITY (https://www.dataspace-culturalheritage.eu/en/projects/infinity) project surveys to share your perspectives and contribute to the future of the digital creative economy. It will take 10 – 15 minutes to complete and the deadline for submissions is 30 April 2026.

Take the survey on collections management: https://survey.zohopublic.eu/zs/b6CAyu

The first survey aims to gather data about collections management practices and information about licensing and reuse of cultural heritage digital objects from the perspective of staff at a cultural heritage institution. If you are a cultural heritage professional working in Cultural Heritage Digital Objects (digitised or born-digital cultural heritage collections) collections management we encourage you to share your thoughts here!

Take the survey on reuse: https://survey.zohopublic.eu/zs/4oBybV

The second survey aims to understand how copyright, licensing and business practices affect real-world reuse of digital heritage, helping identify challenges and opportunities for the creative sector in Europe. If you are a professional working primarily in the creative industries and reusing Cultural Heritage Digital Objects we want to hear from you here!

Europeana Café – AI at the intersection of research and cultural heritage [Mar 25 @ 13:00 CET, online]

Europeana Research Community Café!

Ines Vodopivec, Secretary General of AI4LAM (Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives & Museums)

The Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (AI4LAM) community is an international, participatory organisation committed to advancing the use of artificial intelligence within the cultural heritage sector. It maintains strong collaborative ties with academic institutions – with Stanford and Harvard among its founding members – as well as with cultural heritage organisations such as national libraries and museums.

What’s more, AI4LAM has built a strong collaboration with the Europeana Initiative for the development of AI in the common European data space for cultural heritage, supporting and fostering Europeana Network Association cross‑community work through the Alignment Assembly on ‘Culture for AI’.

AI4LAM stands at the forefront of developing and maintaining cutting‑edge AI tools and services tailored to heritage institutions, enhancing access, management and reuse of digitised and born‑digital content. The community fosters collaboration, innovation and knowledge exchange in the application of AI across institutions worldwide.

In the ENA Research Community Café, we will explore several inspiring use cases of AI in the cultural heritage sector and discover the possibilities that new technologies offer us.

The speaker
Dr Ines Vodopivec, Associate Professor, is deeply committed to advancing digitisation theory and practice within heritage institutions on an international scale. Her notable roles include serving as Deputy Director of the National and University Library of Slovenia, and Vice Dean at Nova University in Ljubljana, being a dedicated member of the UNESCO Memory of the World National Committee, and participating as a member of the IFLA Digital Humanities – Digital Scholarship Committee.
More recently, she assumed the role of Secretary General of AI4LAM, working with the National Library of Norway and Stanford University Library, USA, further solidifying her leadership and influence in the fields of digital heritage and innovative methodologies.
She is also a Management Board Member of the Europeana Network Association and a Steering Group member of the Europeana Research Community.

Interdisciplinary User Requirements in Burial Cultural Heritage [Survey closes Mar 15]

Interdisciplinary User Requirements in Burial Cultural Heritage

The EXCALIBUR project has launched its User Requirements Questionnaire in Burial Cultural Heritage to gather essential feedback from cultural heritage professionals. This input is crucial as it will directly inform the design, functionality, and usability of the EXCALIBUR tools.

 Key details:

  • Purpose: To define the real-world needs, current workflows, key challenges, and future expectations for digital tools in the sector.
  • Topics Covered: Professional background, current data practices, challenges, digital tool expectations, and ethical considerations.
  • Estimated Time: Approximately 10 minutes.
  • Deadline: 15 March 2026.

Questionnaire here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2_-3k_Qdfo3ErdEvnhKwBU-pH37de9ZAGw39kdoHnd8Aetw/viewform

This questionnaire aims to gather insights from professionals involved in burial cultural heritage to inform the development of innovative digital tools that enhance research, conservation, and management practices. Your input will help identify the needs, expectations, and perceived opportunities, in order for the EXCALIBUR platform to effectively address real-world challenges and unlock new benefits through advanced digital solutions.

DARIAH-IE Visits UCC [March 19th, 2026]

Save the Date ! DARIAH-IE visits UCC on March 19th, 2026

DARIAH-IE will be continuing our visits to Irish HEIs with a trip to University College Cork on March 19th. We are looking forward to meeting with colleagues engaged in digitally-enabled arts and humanities activities across the university – from practitioners, researchers, academics to those involved in research support services.

The visit to UCC will include an Open Session with a short presentation on DARIAH and Ireland’s national node DARIAH-IE, followed by a Q&A with Joan Murphy (DARIAH-IE National Manager) and Prof Jennifer Edmond (DARIAH-IE National Coordinator). During the Q&A attendees will be given the opportunity to discuss their needs and wants from the national node in a relaxed and informal way. A number of smaller meetings will also take place.

Further details of the day will be communicated shortly, but if you have any questions in the meantime please contact joan.y.murphy@tcd.ie directly.

Location: North Wing Council Room (first floor, Main Quad)

Time: 11-12:30

Event: Open Session – Q&A / discussion

Gaps and Silences in Cultural Heritage Collections [Feb 17 @ 16:00 GMT online]

Gaps and Silences in Cultural Heritage Collections

17 February (4:00 pm to 5:30 pm)

Join the Digital Humanities Research Hub (School of Advanced Study, University of London) for a fascinating discussion about ‘Gaps and Silences in Cultural Heritage Collections’.

Registration: https://www.sas.ac.uk/digital-humanities-research-hub/events/gaps-silences-cultural-heritage-collections

The Digital Humanities Research Hub (School of Advanced Study, University of London) cordially invites you to the next session of their flagship seminar series on ‘The Fragile Record’.

We live in an age of abundant data — and yet, it remains strikingly fragile and incomplete. This seminar explores the topic of ‘Gaps and Silences in Cultural Heritage Collections.’ We will discuss issues of inclusivity and bias from an interdisciplinary perspective and examine uncertainty, privilege and power in digital archives. How do these factors influence which stories are told and how they are represented in cultural heritage collections and related research?

Please find below a short biography of the participants

Mandana Seyfeddinipur is Director of Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, formerly based at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and part of the CLARIN-UK Consortium. The programme moved to Berlin in 2021, and remains part of the CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation (CKLD).

Andrea Kocsis is Chancellor’s Fellow in Humanities Informatics, at the University of Edinburgh. She comes from an interdisciplinary and international background, and in her research, she combines heritage studies with data and network science. 

Giulia Taurino, Ph.D. is a researcher, artist, and curator specialized in AI for the management and preservation of cultural heritage collections. Her research focuses on forms of content organization in online repositories and digital archives, cultural implications of algorithmic technologies, and applications of AI in the arts, heritage and museum sectors. Past and present affiliations include the NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science, the Alan Turing Institute AI & Arts Interest Group, Getty Research Institute, metaLAB (at) Harvard, MIT Data + Feminism Lab, Brown University’s Virtual Humanities Lab. 

Lucy Havens is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University.  She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2024, where she investigated how machine learning could help archivists identify gender biases in descriptive metadata.  Her research interests include human-centered AI, gender bias and empowerment, and AI evaluation, with a focus on GLAM use cases.

Global Survey Findings on 3D Digitisation in Cultural Heritage [Jan 22, online, 13:00 CET]

Global Survey Findings on 3D Digitisation in Cultural Heritage [Jan 22, online, 13:00 CET]

In cooperation with Heritage Malta, the IIIF and the EU eArchiving Initiative, the newly established Research Center MNEMOSYNE at the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage present the final results of the 2025 Worldwide Survey on 3D Data Acquisition and Digitisation in Cultural Heritage. This event, offered free of charge, provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art in a field of critical importance to Humanity, focusing on the documentation, protection, preservation, and use and reuse of cultural heritage data, medatata and paradata. 

It further offers a critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this domain, clearly articulating the necessity of digitising the past.

The results demonstrate how cultural heritage digitisation contributes to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), while simultaneously advancing scientific knowledge, supporting evidence-based heritage management, and creating long-term value for future generations. 

Moreover, the event seeks to reassess current knowledge and to articulate a clear framework for interdisciplinary collaboration, highlighting how diverse professional communities must work together to ensure the effective safeguarding and sustainable management of the material and immaterial legacy of our past.

Free of Charge Registration:
https://unescochair-dch.net/Webinar-about-Survey-on-Digital-Heritage-Results

Playing with culture: games as heritage, from preservation to reuse [Nov 26, online, @14:00 CET]

Europeana Webinar – Playing with culture: games as heritage, from preservation to reuse

Video games are an engaging way to interact with cultural heritage – entertaining a captive audience with historical periods, facts and with tangible and intangible culture. In this webinar we will explore the video game as a cultural artefact in its own right.

This webinar is organised by Europeana Foundation in association with EFGAMP (European Federation of Game Archives, Museums and Preservation Projects)

Video games can also be seen as cultural artefacts which require careful preservation, that can be reused in their own right, and whose gameplay is in itself a form of intangible heritage. In this webinar we will explore the video game as a cultural artefact – diving into preservation, archiving, and reuse case studies with speakers from EFGAMP network, before discovering some of the ways that video games can be used to disseminate digital cultural heritage material with other speakers. This will be followed by a panel discussion with the speakers.

Confirmed speakers are:

  • Andreas Lange, European Federation of Game Archives, Museums and Preservation Projects
  • Winfried Bergmeyer, International Computer Game Collection
  • Wytze Koppelman, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
  • Gabriele Aroni, Manchester University
  • Lucia Gambardella, Studio Macaco
  • Hosted by Fiona Mowat, Europeana Foundation

Registration: https://pretix.eu/Europeana-Foundation/Playing-with-culture/

Expanding Realities: XR at the Intersection of Hidden Histories, Biosciences, and Creative Technologies [Online and in person, Nov 4th, 12pm]. University of Galway Centre for Creative Technologies.

Expanding Realities: XR at the Intersection of Hidden Histories, Biosciences, and Creative Technologies

This masterclass with visiting Fulbright Specialist, Thomas Tucker of Virginia Tech, explores how Extended Reality (XR), including virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, has become a transformative tool across disciplines. Drawing from his own creative practice and collaborative research, he will present case studies that demonstrate how XR bridges cultural heritage, bioscience and veterinary research, and interactive art.

The session will combine project documentation, live examples, and conceptual framing to illustrate how XR operates as both a research methodology and a medium for storytelling. Attendees will gain insight into how immersive technologies are reshaping education, cultural preservation, scientific research, and artistic innovation.

Highlights

Creative Installations: Immersive XR artworks, including Drosera Obscura and Sound Arcade, which integrate animatronics, sound design, and sensory elements. These projects showcase how XR can provoke ecological awareness and emotional reflection while pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Historic Reconstructions: XR as a means of digitally repatriating artifacts and reconstructing lived environments, from WWI trenches and Civil War battlefields to overlooked rural landscapes. These projects illustrate how immersive experiences can expand access to cultural memory and hidden histories.

Bioscience and Veterinary Simulations: XR applications in veterinary training, animal care, and biological research—such as simulations of bat flight and sonar perception in China—highlight how immersive environments can serve both scientific understanding and empathy building for professionals and students.

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Registration: https://ti.to/creative-tech/masterclass-thomas-tucker

This masterclass is part of a series run by the Centre for Creative Technologies at University of Galway.