{"id":45251,"date":"2025-03-12T22:42:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T22:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=45251"},"modified":"2025-03-12T22:42:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T22:42:37","slug":"poziv-za-prijavu-critical-approaches-to-sources-in-digital-art-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=45251","title":{"rendered":"Poziv za prijavu: Critical Approaches to Sources in (Digital) Art History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Digital Art History \u2013 Methods, Practices, Epistemologies 5<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critical Approaches to Sources in (Digital) Art History<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zagreb, University of Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE)
October 16\u201317, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conference organized by<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Institute of Art History, Zagreb
University of Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE), Zagreb
DARIAH HR<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keynote speakers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Jaskot<\/strong>, Co-Director, Duke Digital Art History & Visual Culture Lab; Professor of Art History, Duke University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chiara Bonacchi<\/strong>, Chancellor\u2019s Fellow in Heritage, Text and Data Mining and Senior Lecturer in Heritage; HCA and Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–
Since 2018, the Digital Art History (DAH) conference series in Zagreb has served as an inclusive international platform for exchange in the field of Digital Art History\/Digital Humanities, addressing specific challenges of conducting digitally-informed research. So far, the four <\/a>conferences<\/a> organized by the Institute of Art History, University of Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE), DARIAH-HR, and their partners gathered around 150 researchers in Zagreb and online, and have published a number of conference presentations in peer-reviewed thematic issues of the scholarly journal \u017divot umjetnosti,<\/em> as well as an edited volume, within several research projects. Building on the critical insights and experiences of previous years, the fifth edition of the conference firmly maintains its initial concern and the agenda of inclusivity and diversity within the conferences\u2019 programs. This guiding principle came as a response to the structural limitations of the field, faced by researchers in under-funded humanities sectors and GLAM institutions in the European (semi-)periphery, and continues to be relevant amidst growing global inequalities, cuts in humanities and social sciences, and growing threats of appropriation and misuse of the open access and fair science policies by the corporate developers of Large Language Models. Operating within a context marked by disciplinary and geographic disparities, as well as limited access to commercial academic publications, the conference also emphasizes collaboration across varying levels of digital expertise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission of bringing together researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, practices, and fields of expertise, is also grounded in the belief that analogue and digital art history are fundamentally complementary. Data-driven research demands transparency about data lifecycles and inherent biases, which can reveal blind spots in traditional art-historical approaches, where broad interpretations are sometimes drawn from limited or incomplete sources. Conversely, art historiography has long embraced methods rooted in the classification of objects, forms, or individuals into distinct categories (for example, in the production of typologies). Regardless of the perspective we adopt, both analogue and digital approaches involve decisions about inclusion and exclusion in classification, based on the available sources. As Paul Jaskot and Steven Whiteman<\/a> have recently argued (2024), rather than emphasizing methodological differences, we should examine how each approach engages with and interprets its source material. This perspective invites us to consider when and how a body of information transforms into evidence that supports new conclusions and interpretations. Additionally, the focus on shared fundamental issues is an invitation to reflect on the contradictions present within Digital Art History: the tension between the emancipatory potential of shifting and erasing disciplinary boundaries on the one hand, and the narrowing of the field into a highly specialized niche that requires continuous investment in equipment, tools, and, even more so, into specialized knowledge and skills, on the other. Is it possible to leverage the emancipatory experience of transdisciplinarity to return to the analogue subject and analyses that can be conducted on a more widely accessible, low-scale basis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following this line of thinking, this year\u2019s conference aims to unite a diverse community of researchers, both analogue and digital, across the broader field of culture to engage in discussing the question of sources that underpin historical scholarship. The choice of sources at the heart of historical work is deeply intertwined with key disciplinary issues, such as the agency of historical actors, the researcher\u2019s positionality, and the ethical considerations that emerge from particular lines of inquiry. Therefore, we invite scholars to engage in a discussion on the politics of sources and data, which requires not only transparency, but also reflexivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topics of particular interest for discussion include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n