Community and Digitisation: the new drivers of cultural heritage

Alba Irollo is in charge of Europeana Research which connects the common European data space for cultural heritage with academia and research. Before that, she worked on the European Year for Cultural Heritage (2018), developing her expertise in cultural policy at the European Commission. She holds a PhD in History of Art, and as a researcher, she is active in the field of heritage and museum studies, with work experiences in Italy, France and the United States.

Dr. Anne Luther is a specialist for digital heritage and a digital humanities scholar. Her work applies technology, design and humanities research for the interaction, exploration and opening of cultural heritage preserved and represented in digital data. She is the founder of the Institute for Digital Heritage, an organisation that specialises in the development of digital solutions for cultural heritage. Luther secured grants for the Chair of Modern Art History at TU Berlin (VW Foundation), Fordham University (NEH) and the Museum am Rothenbaum, MARKK (Siemens Foundation) amongst others and is the Principle Investigator for these projects in digital scholarship and digital art history. She was the research manager at the Center for Data Arts at The New School in New York and built an emphasis on the analysis of museum data and leading data sprints, workshops, international research collaborations, software development, and publications between 2015-2018 and was a ​​Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for 2021-22 at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities at UPenn. She established a focus in data-driven research in museums and digital art history and taught art theory as a teaching assistant for Professor Boris Groys at NYU in 2014-2017. She received her PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. Her research is grounded in cultural studies, digital humanities, and art theory bridging an interdisciplinary approach to computer sciences, IT, and design. Anne worked in several arts institutions internationally including MoMA PS1, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, HKW, Front Desk Apparatus and continues to work as an independent art advisor, consultant and curator internationally.

Anra Kennedy works with museums, galleries and heritage organisations, nationally and internationally, to help them successfully navigate the impact of digital change, digital culture and technologies. Her specialism is digital literacies and skills, particularly in the context of the cultural sector’s resilience, social impact and values-led, inclusive practice. Anra designs and leads cohort-learning programmes for cultural leaders and practitioners on topics including digital storytelling, digitally literate leadership and human-centred digital practice. She’s a partner on One by One and Digital Culture Compass, two ground-breaking initiatives working to define and build digital skills and maturity. Anra advises initiatives including Art UK, GEM and the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘Picturing History’. She is a Creative Industries & Policy Centre ‘Industry Champion’ and a trustee of Creswell Heritage Trust.

Bettina Fabos is Professor of Visual Communication and Interactive Digital Studies at the University of Northern Iowa. Both a scholar and producer of digital culture, her current work revolves around digital culture, digital visualization, digital photo archiving, and public memory. Fabos co-founded and now directs Fortepan.us (https://fortepan.us), a digital archive of amateur photographs on 20th-century Iowa life based on the Hungarian Fortepan (fortepan.hu)

Brigitte is passionate about all things spanning culture, arts, handicraft, traditions, fashion and, of course, copyright law and policy.  She gets a kick out of tackling the fuzzy legal and policy issues that stand in the way of access, use, re-use and remix of culture, information and knowledge. Before joining CC, she worked for a decade as a legal officer at WIPO and then ran her own consultancy, advising Europeana, SPARC Europe and others on copyright matters. Currently located in the Netherlands where she lives with her husband and two kids, Brigitte grew up living in eight different countries across North America, Africa and Europe but Montréal is where she proudly comes from. Brigitte is a fellow at the Canadian think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the Université de Montréal and a master’s in law from Georgetown University. She has been a member of the Bar of Quebec since 2003.

Fiona Mowat is a Data Analyst at Europeana, and currently works on business analytics and user research, including projects such as ENUMERATE and inDICEs. She joined Europeana in 2018 to work on data aggregation after several years working across the cultural sector, especially with metadata. Fiona has a PhD in Classics from the University of Edinburgh which focused on Roman funerary archaeology, art and epigraphy, and involved creating a digital database. She also worked in archaeological finds cataloguing and ancient glass studies, and was part of an international team who excavated the Dariali Fort in Georgia from 2013-2016.

Francesca Manfredini is the Policy and Impact advisor at the European Fashion Heritage Association (EFHA). After having gained a Master in Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship she deepened her knowledge in the cultural sectors while working for the film industry at the European Parliament and in fashion while working for Hermès Italie.

Giulia Dore, holds a Ph.D. in European and Comparative Legal Studies (Doctor Europaeus) from the University of Trento and she is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Trento – Department of Economics and Management. Her research interests include the interplay of social and legal norms in the framework of intellectual property rights, the legal framework of arts particularly in copyright, the impact of digitisation on Galleries Libraries Archives Museums (GLAM) and cultural heritage, and the broader development of Open Science. She is a member of Associazione Italiana di Diritto Comparato (AIDC), Società Italiana per la Ricerca nel Diritto Comparato (SIRD), Associazione Italiana per la promozione della Scienza Aperta (AISA), Società Italiana Esperti di Diritto delle Arti e dello Spettacolo (SIEDAS), Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), Fondation pour le droit de l’art (FDA) and Institute of Art & Law (IAL).

Johan Oomen, head of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision R&D Department and researcher at the Web and Media group of the VU University Amsterdam. Elected board member of the Europeana Association, of the EUscreen Foundation and of CLICKNL, the innovation catalyst for the Dutch Creative Industries. Johan holds a BA in Information Science and an MA in Media Studies. His PhD research focuses on the relationship between participatory culture and institutional policy. He worked for the British Universities Film and Video Council and commercial broadcaster RTL Netherlands.

Justus Dreyling is Policy Director of COMMUNIA. He holds a PhD in Political Science and has previously worked as research fellow at Freie Universität Berlin and as advisor for international regulation at Wikimedia Deutschland. He acts as the volunteer coordinator of the global Access to Knowledge Coalition. Justus’s work concentrates on the impact of copyright and platform governance on fundamental rights.

Architect and PhD in Conservation of Architectural Heritage, since 2000 she has held various roles within the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities and Tourism: from 2009 to 2018 she directed the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation (ICCD); between 2018 and 2020 she was director of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of the Emilia-Romagna Region; she currently holds the position of director of the Central Institute for the Digitization of Cultural Heritage - Digital Library of MIC.

Marco Rendina is the Managing Director of the European Fashion Heritage Association and he is also a senior consultant at Cinecittà - Istituto Luce. Marco has been working for two decades with museums, archives and libraries across Europe, supporting them in their digital transformation, advocating for open access, gaining extensive experience in Digital Libraries design and implementation and fostering innovation in the cultural heritage sector in Europe. He is a member of the Board of Directors of various international cultural heritage organisations and networks, like the European Fashion Heritage Association, the Jewish Heritage Network and the EUscreen Foundation. He has been appointed Chair of the Europeana Aggregators Forum from 2018 to 2021 and is currently part of the Advisory Board of the Europeana Foundation. He is also a member of the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage Expert sub-group of the European Commission.

Maria Drabczyk is sociologist, researcher, manager of cultural projects in the field of heritage and new technologies. Head of policy and advocacy at Centrum Cyfrowe. She is a board member of the EUscreen Foundation, current member of the ENA Members Council and part of its Impact Community Steering Group, and Chair of the FIAT/IFTA Value, Use and Copyright Commission.

Mariana Ziku is currently a PhD candidate and research associate at the Intelligent Interaction research group, Dept. of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean and research associate at Web2Learn. She is the co-founder of the Biennale of Western Balkans and co-lead in the Creative Commons Working Group Digital Community Heritage. Her research and practice focuses on the fields of digital and intangible cultural heritage.

Maria Tartari, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Arts and Tourism at IULM University and collaborates with Prof. Pier Luigi Sacco. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics of Knowledge, Communication, Culture and Creativity. Her doctoral research investigates the cultural and artistic socially engaged practices in public space and digital sphere, and cultural-based social development strategies, and social justice-oriented urban regeneration practices, issues that she has further developed thanks to a research period at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (US). She takes a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the fields of Urban Sociology, Contemporary Art, and Cultural Economics.

Marzia Cerrai (F) EU Funded Project Management Expert at Fondazione Sistema Toscana (FST). She is an expert in European project management and event planning. She has experience in project coordination within International Collaboration Projects funded under several EU programs (Interreg, H2020, CEF, Creative Europe). She coordinated the EU-funded project Me-Mind (Creative Europe). She holds a Ph.D. degree from Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and worked as a researcher in a center of research, collaborating on national and international research projects, aimed to develop digital interdisciplinary collections of text and images. For FST, she collaborates on the organization of complex events, such as the Internet Festival.  

Nadia Nadesan is a researcher, writer, and illustrator working in digital civic participation especially with Decidim. Her work involves a mix of traditional academic research, UX research, and design facilitation. She is a founding member of Design Justice Mediterranea. At Platoniq her work involves managing EU projects, developing methodologies for co-creation and workshops to envision futures of ethical tech, and facilitating product management for open source platforms from creating more consentful tech to increasing accessibility for more meaningful participation.

Olivier Schulbaum. I'd like to put "the crowd" in the middle of new flows of people & value aligned with Europeana 2020 vision Beyond disruptive benefits for creative communities and the Europeana Community itself, how could crowdsourcing tools (from co-creation, crowd development to crowdfunding) serve for raising awareness and facilitating a deeper democratic engagement with digital public domain, creating open standards for collaboration in order to design a comprehensive, educative lab-context, gathering the whole process of conception, design, prototyping and financing for the development of new projects.

Pier Luigi Sacco, PhD, is Professor of Economic Policy, University of Chieti-Pescara, Interim Director of the Policy AP of EIT-KIC Culture and Creativity, Senior Advisor to the OECD Center for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions, and Cities, Associate Researcher at CNR-ISPC, Naples, and Affiliate Researcher at the metaLAB (at) Harvard. He has been Visiting Professor, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, and Special Adviser of the EU Commissioner to Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. He is a member of the scientific board of Europeana Foundation, Den Haag, of the Advisory Council on Scientific Innovation of the Czech Republic, Prague, and of the Foundation for the School of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Italian Ministry of Culture. He regularly gives courses and invited lectures in major universities worldwide. He works and consults internationally in the fields of culture-led local development and is often invited as keynote speaker in major cultural policy conferences worldwide. He has published more than 200 papers on international peer-reviewed journals and edited books with major international publishers.

Roberta Pireddu is a research assistant at KU Leuven’s Literary Theory and Cultural Studies department. She has recently obtained an MSc in Digital Humanities at KU Leuven. Previously, she graduated from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau with an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and from the University of Milan with a BA in History. Her research interests include the user's engagement and interaction with the cultural heritage as well as the use of digital tools to support historical analysis and research. She worked as a MOOC developer for the DETECt and inDICEs project and she is currently collaborating on the CitizenHeritage project

Simonetta Buttò (Rome 1957) graduated in Italian Literature, she has two specialisation degrees, in Modern Philology and in Codicology, obtained at the Sapienza University of Rome. She directed the University Library of Genoa, the Library of Modern and Contemporary History of Rome, the National Library “Vittorio Emanuele III” of Naples, the Library and Girolamini Monumental Complex in Naples, and since May 2015 she is the director of the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries (ICCU). Since 1998 she has been teaching as a professor in several institutions, including the universities of l’Aquila, Pisa and Siena. Currently she teaches at Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archivistici e Librari of the Sapienza University of Rome. She is the editor-in-chief of «DigItalia: rivista del digitale nei beni culturali», a member of the Scientific Committee of the «Nuovi Annali della Scuola speciale per archivisti e bibliotecari» and of the journal «Culture digitali», and of the Scientific and Reading Committee of the «Pagine diverse» series of the Pacini Publisher in Pisa; she is also member of the National Institute of Roman Studies and of the National Centre for Leopardi Studies.

Sofie Taes is an alumna of KU Leuven (Belgium), where she graduated in musicology (2004) and Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2005). Since 2013 she works at the Institute for Cultural Studies (CS Digital) at KU Leuven. At CS Digital she has devised and successfully completed numerous international projects in the Digital Humanities and Digital Cultural Heritage sector (EuropeanaPhotography, Europeana Common Culture, Europeana XX – Century of Change, PAGODE – Europeana China e.a.), first as a general collaborator, then as a digital curator and specialist in user engagement, finally in a leading and coordinating role. In September 2022 she was appointed Innovation (IOF) Manager for DigitGLAM, a brand-new KU Leuven research consortium at the intersection of the humanities and innovative technologies. As a mandate holder, her task is to explore, foster, facilitate and forge valorization tracks for research outcomes potentially beneficial for the wider GLAM sector.

Trilce Navarrete is a specialist in the economic and historic aspects of digital heritage. Navarrete is scientific advisor at the European Group of Museum Statistics (EGMUS) since 2011, board member of the International Committee of Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC), and regular guest lecturer at various Museology programs worldwide. She has contributed to the creation and development of the European statistics for digital heritage (ENUMERATE), has served as advisor for the creation and evaluation of (national) digital infrastructures, and has collaborated in several European funded research projects, including RICHES and the Virtual Multimodal Museum (ViMM). Navarrete was responsible for the first national study of the economic and historic development of digital museums, in The Netherlands. Navarrete holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. As lecturer in the Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship program, Navarrete teaches at BA and MA level a variety of courses, including the Museums in Context MA elective (CC4122) where students get to apply theories to solve a wicked problem posed by a Dutch museum.