DRHA2020: Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts 2020 University of Salford MediaCityUK, UK, September 6-9, 2020

Digital Curation has become ubiquitous on a scale ranging from large digital preservation programmes to individual citizen curation projects that often involve collaborations between professionals and enthusiasts. Extending Joseph Beuys’ controversial assertion that everyone is an artist, now everyone is a (digital) curator. Curation in the context of Contemporary Art is closely aligned with Digital Curation skills; while a grounding in contemporary art marking is essential, of course, the ability to understand the contemporary media ecology within which the works are created, exhibited, documented, and preserved is equally relevant for contemporary art curators. Similarly, in Performance there’s an interest in curation of emerging formats, or immersive documents including social media and augmented/virtual reality, as well as perspectives relating to the motivations, needs and aspirations of readers or audience members who might engage with such document. More broadly, Digital Curation aligns with interest in Digital Heritage, Digital Forensics, Digital Preservation, and Digital Archives.

In focusing on this evolving area, DHRA 2020 mirrors the purpose of the Digital Curation Lab at the University of Salford in its theme of ‘Situating Digital Curation: Locating Creative Practice and Research between Digital Humanities and the Arts.’ The Digital Curation Lab was established at MediaCityUK in 2019 to facilitate research on the collection, preservation, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of digital assets and technologies of memory at The University of Salford.

Submission Guidelines

We would like to extend a call for proposals for papers, presentations, provocations, workshops, and other interventions on this theme for the 2020 DRHA conference. Individual 20-minute slots will be made for proposals selected through a peer-review process. Other formats will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Conference Strands

• Digital arts and design
• Digital humanities
• Creative and cultural industries
• Digital libraries and archives
• Citizen science
• Documenting performance*

* The Documenting Performance strand is coordinated by Dr Joseph Dunne-Howrie and Dr Lyn Robinson (Department of Library & Information Science, CityLis, at City, University of London) who will be running this strand as a DocPerform symposium throughout the parallel sessions of DRHA 2020. This follows on from three previous DocPerform symposia that have been held in London since 2016. Further information available on the DRHA 2020 website.

Conference Convenors

• Dr Kirsty Fairclough
• Dr Toni Sant

Publication

Selected DRHA2020 proceedings will be published in an affiliated issue of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, following blind peer-review on the final submission for publication.

Submissions and Contact Information

All proposals must be submitted through EasyChair.
Abstracts sent via email will not be processed.
Questions about submissions and general queries about the conference should sent through the DRHA 2020 website.