Detailed description

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.

Programme aims

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.

Research Topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Digital Anthropology
• Digital Cultural Heritage
• Digital Humanities
• Digital Libraries
• Digital Museology
• Digital and Public History
• Information Science
• Media Art
• Natural Language Processing
• Open Science
• Scholarly Digital Editing
• Virtual Environments

Prospects

The highIy interdisciplinary and international profile of those who obtain this title can lind employment in:

• Superintendencies, museums and other national and international cultural institutions (libraries, archives and cultural centers in general), non-governmental agencies related to the management of cultural heritage, international organizations for the study and conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage and its advisory bodies;
• The high-level profile can work in the publishing domain, not only for traditional "editing" actions, but in those publishing houses that want to experiment new approaches in the production of knowledge through innovative and transmedia forms of cultural content production, such as systems of "data stories" and new narratives for the transmission of knowledge;
• Private companies that work in cultural heritage, and in particular for the creation of environments and infrastructures, including Web-based applications, for the enhancement of cultural resources, also reflecting on users' profiles, as "personas" and devices for access;
• Communication agencies, non-profit organizations for the production of transversal cultural strategies and artistic projects, tourism industry, cultural and creative industries (ICC);
• University research, which increasingly requires interdisciplinary skills and hybridization of knowledge between different fields and disciplinary areas, also reflecting on the research and third mission actions carried out by the centers involved in the training project: ADLab, DH.ARC, FRameLab, ARCE, OpenAire nexus, LUDI, CRICC, CIust-ER CreAte by ARTER.

The course is qualified for the highly interdisciplinary path it undertakes, both in the choice of topics and in the selection of College members, following the international guidelines for research on cultural heritage in the digital ecosystem. Some parameters identify the internationalization features of the PhD:

1. Close collaboration with the Una Europa consortium (European Doctorate on Cultural Heritage), already involving colleagues from the Consortium universities among the members of the college;
2. An offer intended as a natural continuation of training in interdisciplinary fields already well-known by students coming from abroad, where cross-disciplinary training is the added value of the profile;
3. The personal relationships of the College's members with international colleagues, with whom a collaboration is already in place; Erasmus conventions and exchanges already active; contacts with international research centers: e.g. for DH, the EADH and ADHO Associations, the DARIAH infrastructure, the Center for e-humanities (Cologne), the Department of Digital Humanities of King's College (London), TTEM (Paris), Octet (Oxford), Mundaneum (Mons), Bibliotheca disciplined International Forum (Brazil), Center for the Fine Print (University of West England - Bristol), WAB (University of Bergen), The Stirling Center for Publishing and Communication (Stirling Univ.), South African Department of Computer Science.
4. The precious and vast cultural heritage preserved in Italy, leveraging its high level of interest in the international environment;
5. The development of innovative research methods and digitization models, potentially replicable in other countries, designing new systems, environments, solutions, in the domain of "FAIRification", with a widely reuse approach in an Open Science context.