CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 2025

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 2025
“Digital Connections: A Dialogue around Languages, Arts, Cultures, and Technologies”
26-27 June 2025
University of Genoa

The Doctoral Programme in Digital Humanities of the Universities of Genoa and Turin invites
doctoral students to participate in the interdisciplinary conference “Digital Connections: A Dialogue
around Languages, Arts, Cultures, and Technologies” to be held at the University of Genoa on 26
and 27 June 2025.

Digital Humanities (DH) represent an area of study at the intersection of computational methods and
theoretical reflections specific to the humanities and social sciences (Ramsay, 2013), proposing a
systematic use of digital methods and critical reflection on their application to the humanities and
social sciences. With reference to the Digital Humanities manifesto produced as part of the ‘nonconference’
“THATCamp” held in Paris in 2010, DH is further presented as a way to form a globally
connected interdisciplinary and multilingual community (Mounier, 2010).

This niche field has increasingly become a major and visible scholarly movement, marking a
profound transformation in the global academic and cultural landscape. At a meeting organized by
the “Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing” in 2002, Harold Short and Willard McCarty
emphasized the importance of a model of methodological commons, that is a shared set of digital
techniques and practices applicable across the humanities disciplines. In the model they developed,
such methodological commons include interdisciplinary technical methods, new collaborations
between sciences, and humanities and social sciences, combinations of data and technologies, formal
data analysis, and large-scale source management (Hughes, 2015).

Given their nature, thus, Digital Humanities are seen as a multidisciplinary galaxy (Ciotti, 2023), a
metaphor that underscores their variety of scholarly and educational experiences. Patrick Svensson,
in his “Big Digital Humanities” (2016), expands this view by introducing the concept of
‘infrastructure’, understood both as an operational platform and as an intellectual space to foster
dialogue between the digital and the humanities. Digital Humanities represent a mutual and valuable
exchange between the humanities and social sciences, and the digital technologies. This exchange
has also actively contributed to the advancement of the technological landscape by introducing critical
and reflexive approaches. Significant examples include feminist and postcolonial perspectives, which
highlight the biases embedded in the digital technologies and deconstruct their apparent neutrality
(Risam, 2018). At the same time, the ethical debate around artificial intelligence, as highlighted in
recent critical reviews (Prem, 2023), underscores the urgency of an interdisciplinary dialogue to build
a more inclusive and informed technological future.

The advent of the digital technologies has changed, and continues to change, the methodologies
common to the Humanities, generating new connections between different humanities. A connection
that is made possible thanks to deeply interdisciplinary tools and appliable in multiple contexts such
as Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs);
Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) for the artistic or educational field; or approaches such
as distant reading (Moretti, 2000), scalable reading (Jockers, 2013) for literature analysis, Machine
Translation, Technology Enhanced Learning (Timmis et al., 2015) for the educational field.

In the light of what has been previously stated, this conference aims to explore not only how digital
tools have radically transformed practices and possibilities in humanities research, but also how the
humanist’s critical and reflective approaches influence the Information and Communication
Technologies (ITC). This bidirectional exchange favours a reflection on the transformations and
connections these dynamics generate in art, languages, cultures, and, more broadly, the humanities.

Participants are invited to contribute with abstracts regarding the following three areas of research
and their related technologies and methodologies:

1. Multimedia technologies and digitisation for arts, entertainment and cultural heritage:
transformations in the production and reception processes of artistic and multimedia works,
digital technologies for digitisation, preservation, and fruition of artistic, linguistic,
architectural, documentary heritage, archival science, performing arts, virtual museums;
2. Computational methods and technologies for linguistics, literatures, and cultures:
translation studies, lexicography, semantics, sociolinguistics, onomastics and toponymy;
multilingualism and language interference, text analysis using AI, big data, NLP, corpus
linguistics, computational linguistics, applied linguistics, analysis of literary works and
information extraction from texts using digital approaches (scalable reading);
3. Education technologies and digital learning environments: teaching strategies for learning,
new technologies and artificial intelligence for teaching, game-based learning, special
pedagogy, museum education.

The conference will be further enriched at the theoretical, methodological and application levels with precious contributions from national and international keynote speakers pertaining to the above-mentioned fields. For further information and updates please refer to the website that is being constantly updated: https://digitalhumanities.phd.unige.it/

Author guidelines
• Long abstract: 1000-1500 words (excluding bibliography);
• Format: .docx and .pdf, following Genova University Press editorial standards available at the following link: http://gup.unige.it/sites/gup.unige.it/files/2024-11/Norme_editoriali_GU P_agg_2024-11-21.pdf;
• Languages accepted: Italian and English;
• Deadline for submission: by 10 March 2025. New deadline: by 30 March.
• Notice of acceptance: by 1 May 2025;
• Programme publication: between 5-9 May 2025;

• Method of submission:
Proposals should be sent to giornatadh@unige.it indicating the following as subject ‘Digital Humanities 2025 Conference Proposal’ and mentioning the number of the domain relevant to your contribution among the three proposed above. Please attach to your proposal a short biography related to your academic career and current affiliation.
Example: “ Digital Humanities 2025 Conference Proposal – Domain n.1”;
• Method of participation:
The conference will be held in presence.
Selected authors will be invited to present their contributions in thematic sessions organized to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange.
The maximum length for each talk will be 15 minutes. A Q&A session will follow each thematic session.
Conference participation is free of charge.
• Publication:
Contributions will be reviewed and, if accepted by the scientific committee, will be presented during the conference and subsequently published in a volume by Genova University Press.
Scientific committee
Carlo Battini, Elisa Bricco, Eliana Carrara, Carmen Concilio, Elisa Corino, Marina Marchisio Conte, Saverio Iacono, Massimo Malagugini, Alessandra Molino, Cristina Onesti, Antonella Poce, Laura Rescia, Micaela Rossi, Ilaria Torre, Simone Torsani, Nesrine Triki, Gianni Vercelli

For further information: giornatadh@unige.it