Digital technologies are profoundly transforming how cultural heritage is documented, researched, interpreted, managed, and communicated. The increasing availability of digitised and born-digital sources, together with advances in data management, visualization, artificial intelligence, and digital communication, is creating new opportunities as well as new challenges for cultural heritage world. In this context, digital heritage has emerged as a critical field that combines technological innovation with historical, cultural, ethical, and societal questions. The course aims to provide students with the theoretical foundations and critical perspectives necessary to understand and engage with digital heritage in contemporary practice. Particular attention is given to the role of digital technologies in the production, interpretation, representation, and dissemination of heritage knowledge across different cultural and institutional contexts. The course encourages students to critically examine digital tools and methodologies rather than considering them as neutral technologies, reflecting on issues such as data quality, representation, accessibility, inclusivity, and digital sustainability. By integrating historical inquiry, heritage studies, and digital methods, the course contributes to the development of interdisciplinary competences that are increasingly required in heritage institutions, research environments, and cultural creative industries. Through lectures, discussions, and project-based activities, students will acquire the conceptual and methodological foundations needed to design and critically evaluate digital heritage initiatives, preparing them to address the opportunities and complexities of heritage in the digital age.

At the end of the course, students will be expected to: • Know and understand the main concepts, theories, and debates that define the field of digital heritage and its relationship with cultural heritage studies. • Know and understand the opportunities, limitations, and ethical implications of digital technologies in the documentation, preservation, interpretation, management, and dissemination of cultural heritage. • Know and understand the characteristics, uses, and critical issues associated with digitised and born-digital heritage sources. • Know and understand the role of data, metadata, standards, and digital infrastructures in the creation, management, and reuse of heritage information. • Know and understand the functions and practices of GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) in the digital environment. • Apply digital methods and tools to collect, organise, analyse, interpret, and communicate heritage-related information from multiple sources. • Critically evaluate the quality, reliability, representativeness, and limitations of digital heritage data and resources. • Analyse complex heritage scenarios through the integration of historical, cultural, spatial, and digital information. • Design digital heritage projects by defining objectives, identifying appropriate digital methods, and selecting suitable data sources and tools. • Reuse, curate, and disseminate digital heritage resources from GLAM institutions in accordance with ethical, legal, and professional standards. • Communicate heritage knowledge through digital formats and platforms tailored to different audiences and purposes. • Critically reflect on the social, cultural, and political implications of digital technologies in heritage research and practice.

No specific prerequisites are required.

1. Introduction to Digital Heritage: Concepts, Definitions and Debates (1 CFU): Digital heritage as a field of research and practice. Heritage as data, memory, narrative, and representation. From cultural heritage to digital heritage. Digitisation and born-digital heritage. International frameworks and debates, including the UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage. Expanding understandings of digital heritage beyond technological approaches through critical and historical perspectives. Analysis of international case studies. 2. Digital Collections, Archives and GLAM Ecosystems (1 CFU): Digital archives and collections. The role of GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) in the digital age. Digitisation strategies, preservation, access, curation, and reuse of cultural heritage resources. Open access, copyright, and ethical considerations. Critical analysis of digital collections and archival practices through case studies. 3. Data, Metadata and Critical Digital Heritage (1 CFU): Understanding heritage as data. Data creation, documentation, metadata, and paradata. Standards, interoperability, linked data, and FAIR principles. Critical approaches to data and digital infrastructures. Data quality, representation, inclusivity, bias, and power relations in digital heritage. The role of data in shaping heritage narratives and public knowledge. 4. Spatial Humanities and Digital Approaches to Place (1 CFU): The spatial turn in the humanities and heritage studies. Historical GIS, WebGIS, spatial storytelling, and mapping practices. Digital methods for exploring cultural landscapes, cities, memory, and historical transformations across time and space. Analysis of heritage through multiple spatial scales and interconnected datasets. 5. Digital Storytelling, Visualisation and Public Engagement (1 CFU): Digital narratives and heritage interpretation. Visualisation methods including maps, timelines, multimedia environments, and digital exhibitions. Storytelling as a tool for communicating heritage significance and fostering public engagement. Opportunities and challenges in representing diverse, multicultural, and contested heritage narratives. 6. Emerging Technologies and the Future of Heritage (1 CFU): Artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, 3D modelling, digital twins, and generative technologies in heritage research and practice. Opportunities, limitations, ethical implications, and critical reflections on technological innovation in the heritage sector.

At the beginning of the course students' abilities and backgrounds will be mapped, and the practice will be targeted accordingly

The course includes theoretical discussions plus practical exercises in which students will form project groups of 2 or 3 persons. Lessons will discuss diverse tools, including digital narratives, digital atlas, 3D models and gamification, for exploring the links between heritage of different scales and digital materials of different formats. For the student projects, the working groups will use GLAM digital collections in order to investigate potential and links among digital heritage and research on cultural heritage with an historical perspective. By considering their diverse digital skills, they will collaboratively develop digital projects about the assigned case study to formulate and respond to a historic curiosity about the city. A specific attention will be paid to Turin’s industrialisation and its heritage as a specific scenario. Students will work their own laptops computer with basic drawing software installed. Students will be assisted to work on themes and methodologies for shaping a virtual environment useful to link diverse primary sources and to experience/design tools useful for their management. The outcome will be a digital heritage project, and groups will be expected to make an oral presentation of their project. Theoretical and practical parts will develop in an integrated manner. The general distribution will be as follows: Introduction to digital heritage (30 hours), Introduction to the case study and the practice (6 hours), practice (24 hours)

Bibliographical references will be provided during the course according to the development of the topics and the students’ project work. The following readings provide the main theoretical, methodological, and critical references for the course. Compulsary readings will be included in the written exam and questions of the teachign committee during the final presentation can come from bibliography. COMPULSORY READINGS: • UNESCO. (2003). Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000179529 • Drucker, J. (2014). Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Chapter 5 “Interface and Interpretation”.) • D’Ignazio, C. and Klein, L. F. (2020). Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Compulsory part: Chapter 1 “The Power Chapter”.) • Terras, M. (2022). “Digital humanities and digitised cultural heritage.” In J. O’Sullivan (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, pp. 255-266. London: Bloomsbury Academic. • Dinler, M. (2024). “Metadata and Linked Open Data in Digital Heritage for Decolonization.” In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Cham: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61493-5_52-1 • Jaillant, L., Warwick, C., Gooding, P., Aske, K., Layne-Worthey, G. and Downie, J. S. (Eds.). (2025). Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage Organisations. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088375\ • UNESCO. (2025). Report of the Independent Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence and Culture (CULTAI). UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/fichiers/2025/09/CULTAI_Report%20of%20the%20Independent%20Expert%20Group%20on%20Artificial%20Intelligence%20and%20Culture%20%28final%20online%20version%29%201.pdf • Goudarouli, E., Sichani, A.-M., & Winters, J. (2026). Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage. Access, Use, Value and Sustainability. University of London Press. https://doi.org/10.63674/bxds6730 (Chapter 1: Introduction) FURTHER SUGGESTED READINGS: • Cameron, F. and Kenderdine, S. (Eds.). (2007). Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Read: Introduction.) • Kirschenbaum, M. G. (2008). Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. • Denard, H. (Ed.). (2009). The London Charter for the Computer-Based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage, Version 2.1. https://www.londoncharter.org/ • Bodenhamer, D. J., Corrigan, J. and Harris, T. M. (Eds.). (2010). The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. • Burdick, A., Drucker, J., Lunenfeld, P., Presner, T. and Schnapp, J. (2012). Digital_Humanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. • Giaccardi, E. (Ed.). (2012). Heritage and Social Media: Understanding Heritage in a Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. • Gold, M. K. (Ed.). (2012). Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. • Tamborrino, R. and Rinaudo, F. (2015). “Digital urban history as an interpretation key of cities’ cultural heritage.” In Digital Heritage 2015, vol. 2, pp. 235-242. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/DigitalHeritage.2015.7419503 • Padilla, T. (2019). Responsible Operations: Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI in Libraries. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/xk7z-9g97 • Dinler, M. (2021). “Counter-Mapping through Digital Tools as an Approach to Urban History: Investigating the Spatial Condition of Activism.” Sustainability, 13(16), 8904. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168904 • Forte, P. (Ed.). (2026). Patrimoni culturali e intelligenza artificiale. Napoli: Editoriale Scientifica. (Open access: https://editorialescientifica.it/prodotto/patrimoni-culturali-e-intelligenza-artificiale/)

Slides; Libro di testo; Materiale multimediale ;

Modalita di esame: Prova scritta (in aula); Prova orale obbligatoria; Elaborato grafico prodotto in gruppo;

Exam: Written test; Compulsory oral exam; Group graphic design project;

... You will be working in groups on a specific case study. The final evaluation will be based on your group work, and individual assessment (based on the written test and compulsory oral exam evalutations, but also active partecipation to the course and engagement in class discussions) The final group work on the case study (50 % - group vote): Your group work will use digital heritage tools and methods to analyse, interpret, and communicate heritage in innovative and critical ways. You need to submit your final work 1 week before the exam date. On the exam date, you will be presenting your project. Final Presentation of the group work (15% - individual vote): You will be presenting your group work in the exam date. Members of the teaching committee MAY pose questions from the course contents if they see necessary. Written exam (Moodle) (15 % - individual vote): Multiple choice exam on Moodle from the course contents. It will be conducted in the last week of the courses. Process diary (10 % - individual vote): Each group is requested to keep a diary. Members should write in turn to register not only the develeopment of the process but also to include visuals as well as the group dynamics, emotions, challenges, excitements. Physical hand-written diaries are preferred, however, also digital diary is accepted. You need to submit your diary 1 week before the exam date with your group work. Peer review (10 % - individual vote): You will receive an anoynmous evaluation from your group mates.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilita o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unita Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione piu idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.