Digital research in the arts and humanities has traditionally tended to focus on digitised physical objects and archives. However, born-digital cultural materials that originate and circulate across a range of digital formats and platforms are rapidly expanding and increasing in complexity, which raises opportunities and issues for research and archiving communities. Collecting, preserving, accessing and sharing born-digital objects and data presents a range of technical, legal and ethical challenges that, if unaddressed, threaten the archival and research futures of these vital cultural materials and records of the 21st century. Moreover, the environments, contexts and formats through which born-digital records are mediated necessitate reconceptualising the materials and practices we associate with cultural heritage and memory. Research and practitioner communities working with born-digital materials are growing and their interests are varied, from digital cultures and intangible cultural heritage to web archives, electronic literature and social media.

To explore and discuss issues relating to born-digital cultural heritage, the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in collaboration with British Library curators, colleagues from Aarhus University and the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme at the British Museum, are currently inviting submissions for the inaugural Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory conference, which will be hosted at the University of London and online from 2-4 April 2025. The full call for proposals and submission portal is available at https://easychair.org/cfp/borndigital2025.

This international conference seeks to further an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral discussion on how the born-digital transforms what and how we research in the humanities. We welcome contributions from researchers and practitioners involved in any way in accessing or developing born-digital collections and archives, and interested in exploring the novel and transformative effects of born-digital cultural heritage. Areas of particular (but not exclusive) interest include:

1. A broad range of born-digital objects and formats:
• Web-based and networked heritage, including but not limited to websites, emails, social media platforms/content and other forms of personal communication
• Software-based heritage, such as video games, mobile applications, computer-based artworks and installations, including approaches to archiving, preserving and understanding their source code
• Born-digital narrative and artistic forms, such as electronic literature and born-digital art collections
• Emerging formats and multimodal born-digital cultural heritage
• Community-led and personal born-digital archives
• Physical, intangible and digitised cultural heritage that has been remediated in a transformative way in born-digital formats and platforms
2. Theoretical, methodological and creative approaches to engaging with born-digital collections and archives:
• Approaches to researching the born-digital mediation of cultural memory
• Histories and historiographies of born-digital technologies
• Creative research uses and creative technologist approaches to born-digital materials
• Experimental research approaches to engaging with born-digital objects, data and collections
• Methodological reflections on using digital, quantitative and/or qualitative methods with born-digital objects, data and collections
• Novel approaches to conceptualising born-digital and/or hybrid cultural heritage and archives
3. Critical approaches to born-digital archiving, curation and preservation:
• Critical archival studies and librarianship approaches to born-digital collections
• Preserving and understanding obsolete media formats, including but not limited to CD-ROMs, floppy disks and other forms of optical and magnetic media
• Preservation challenges associated with the platformisation of digital cultural production
• Semantic technology, ontologies, metadata standards, markup languages and born-digital curation
• Ethical approaches to collecting and accessing ‘difficult’ born-digital heritage, such as traumatic or offensive online materials
• Risks and opportunities of generative AI in the context of born-digital archiving
4. Access, training and frameworks for born-digital archiving and collecting:
• Institutional, national and transnational approaches to born-digital archiving and collecting
• Legal, trustworthy, ethical and environmentally sustainable frameworks for born-digital archiving and collecting, including attention to cybersecurity and safety concerns
• Access, skills and training for born-digital research and archives
• Inequalities of access to born-digital collecting and archiving infrastructures, including linguistic, geographic, economic, legal, cultural, technological and institutional barriers

Options for Submissions

A number of different submission types are welcomed and there will be an option for some presentations to be delivered online.

• Conference papers (150-300 words)
• Presentations lasting 20 minutes. Papers will be grouped with others on similar subjects or themes to form a complete session. There will be time for questions at the end of each session.
• Panel sessions (100 word summary plus 150-200 words per paper)
• Proposals should consist of three or four 20-minute papers. There will be time for questions at the end of each session.
• Roundtables (200-300 word summary and 75-100 word bio for each speaker)
• Proposals should include between three to five speakers, inclusive of a moderator, and each session will be no more than 90 minutes.
• Posters, demos & showcases (100-200 words)
• These can be traditional printed posters, digital-only posters, digital tool showcases, or software demonstrations. Please indicate the form your presentation will take in your submission.
• If you propose a technical demonstration of some kind, please include details of technical equipment to be used and the nature of assistance (if any) required. Organisers will be able to provide a limited number of external monitors for digital posters and demonstrations, but participants will be expected to provide any specialist equipment required for their demonstration. Where appropriate, posters and demos may be made available online for virtual attendees to access.
• Lightning talks (100-200 words)
• Talks will be no more than 5 minutes and can be used to jump-start a conversation, pitch a new project, find potential collaborations, or try out a new idea. Reports on completed projects would be more appropriately given as 20-minute papers.
• Workshops (150-300 words)
• Please include details about the format, length, proposed topic, and intended audience.

Proposals will be reviewed by members of the programme committee. The peer review process will be double-blind, so no names or affiliations should appear on the submissions. The one exception is proposals for roundtable sessions, which should include the names of proposed participants. All authors and reviewers are required to adhere to the conference Code of Conduct.

The submission deadline for proposals is 15 May 2024, has been extended to 7 June 2024, and notification of acceptance is now scheduled for early August 2024. Organisers plan to make a number of bursaries available to presenters to cover the cost of attendance and details about these will be shared when notifications are sent. 

Key Information:

• Dates: 2 - 4 April 2025
• Venue: University of London, London, UK & online
• Call for papers deadline: 7 June 2024
• Notification of acceptance: early August 2024
• Submission link: https://easychair.org/cfp/borndigital2025

Further details can be found on the conference website and the call for proposals submission portal at https://easychair.org/cfp/borndigital2025. If you have any questions about the conference, please contact the organising committee at [email protected].