“People from across the University of Edinburgh work on research and knowledge exchange relating to cultural heritage. The Digital Cultural Heritage cluster connects these people and celebrates work they do that engages with a very broad range of topics, concepts and technologies.”
Dr Jen Ross and Dr Philippa Sheail, Digital Cultural Heritage Cluster Leads
The Digital Cultural Heritage cluster brings together researchers from across the University of Edinburgh who work on analysing, understanding and developing new approaches to the relationships between data, digital and cultural heritage.
Working with a wide range of partners in the gallery, library, archive and museum sector, cluster members are researching tangible and intangible cultural heritage as it relates to digital preservation, sharing and copyright, new audiences, organisational transformation, learning from collections, community engagement, tourism, curatorial practice, text mining, and geographical information systems.
Our research spans both local and global heritage contexts, and draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives.
Image credit: Mols, Nick; Khan, Asad; Boyd, Mike. (2019). 55 George Square during Edinburgh Festival, [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. Centre for Data Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/2730
Meet our researchers
Copyright, IP and access
We explore the complex legal, social, educational and design implications of emerging patterns of access, changing orientations to copyright, methods and ethical implications of attempts to control intellectual property, and the nature of digital openness in the cultural heritage sector.
Digital Documentation
Digital documentation of cultural heritage is a site of significant innovation and technological change, as scanning technologies and methods become increasingly sophisticated and allow unprecedented forms of analysis of and access to heritage. Our research explores the uses and futures for these emerging technologies.
Tourism and Heritage
Our research in this area explores the implications of the digital in shaping and changing the relationships between tourism and heritage, including navigating preservation of and access to cultural heritage, and the role of tourism in producing heritage.
Geospatial Data and Heritage
We design, develop, investigate and find new uses for geospatial applications and datasets. Geospatial analysis of archives, texts and collections generates new research insights and public engagement opportunities in a wide range of heritage contexts.
Digital Engagement, Learning and Participation
We research how people engage with digital and digitised cultural heritage; and how digital technologies and tools support new forms of learning, engagement and participation. Our work spans topics and approaches including crowdsourcing, public and participatory history, evaluation and engagement, community archiving and digital education.
Working with Digital Archives and Collections
We develop and use innovative methods for creating, analysing, searching, digitising, and combining archives and collections, including text mining, geoparsing, image recognition and other forms of knowledge discovery and creative uses of archives and collections as data. These methods help us better understand the past and shed light on present-day issues and questions.
Projects
Here are some of the projects that cluster members are working on – feel free to contact them for more information or to get involved.
Updates & Events
Upcoming events and workshops will be posted here.
Digital Cultural Heritage Research Network
We work closely with the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Network, whose membership spans both the higher education and GLAM sectors. The network was launched in 2016, and is always open to new members.
