Description and objectives

In the context of digital transition, the techniques and methodologies used to manage data and information, objects and themes related to cultural heritage throughout their entire life cycle represent a fertile area of research, where traditional knowledge and disciplines intersect with new approaches from the digital humanities. The aim of the PhD programme is to promote the growth and development of new specialist skills in which digital tools produce renewed interpretative and analytical approaches and, at the same time, enable the creation of knowledge (including in a social and collaborative dimension), towards an innovative and broader enhancement, dissemination and public enjoyment of heritage, including through the meta-disciplinary interaction of scholars from different fields and dialogue with all entities active in the field of cultural heritage.

The PhD programme originates from cross-disciplinary collaboration on the theme of cultural heritage and related digital technologies. Various departments from different areas (humanities, technical-technological and economics) participate in the programme, creating cross-disciplinary synergy in the field of digital cultural heritage.
The course therefore focuses on issues related to the study of cultural heritage (consisting of objects, actions and technologies), understood in its broadest and most multifaceted meaning: texts and related transmission media, documents, artefacts and material objects, musical assets, visual and performing arts productions, monuments, architecture and historical sites, landscapes and intangible resources, both tangible and intangible. The core of the research is the enhancement of this heterogeneous heritage through digital methodologies and techniques, but the course also focuses on digital culture from a broader critical-epistemological perspective. The topics therefore cover areas of research relating to cultural heritage - from antiquity to the contemporary world - innovating through computational and digital methods in a context of cross-disciplinary knowledge and transdisciplinarity.

In particular, specific methodologies and application techniques are identified on the basis of traditional scientific-disciplinary sectors, covered in the broad and multifaceted domain of the humanities together with computer science disciplines.