The third Semantic Annotation for the Ancient World (SA4AW) conference focuses on the role of semantic annotation in the study of the ancient world cultural heritage, and historical and low-resource languages across diverse cultural and textual traditions.

Semantic annotation—whether manual, automated, or human-in-the-loop—enables the identification and linking of concepts, entities, and relationships, transforming raw textual and visual data into structured, interoperable knowledge. At a moment when LLMs can generate fluent interpretations but require grounding in domain-specific context, semantic annotation and knowledge graphs provide essential transparency, precision, and reusability. We welcome contributions that showcase methods, tools, case studies, theoretical reflections, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. In line with FAIR and Linked Open Data principles, the conference encourages open and accessible research practices.

The conference is structured around three guiding questions: What do we annotate? This concerns the identification, interpretation, and semantic enrichment of meaningful features of texts, manuscripts, inscriptions, images, and material culture. How do we annotate? This addresses the methods, tools, standards, and computational approaches used to create, represent, evaluate, and reuse annotations. Who annotates? This examines the roles of individual scholars, collaborative annotation communities, and AI systems in producing, interpreting, and validating annotations, with particular attention to human expertise, collective knowledge creation, inter-annotator agreement and disagreement, epistemological assumptions.

At a time when Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate seemingly fluent interpretations but require grounding in domain-specific knowledge and evidence, semantic annotation, ontologies, and knowledge graphs offer essential foundations for transparency, explainability, precision, and reusability.

For this year’s iteration of the conference, we wish to emphasize human (or expert or scholar)-in-the-loop workflows, as well as annotation standards and formats. How can digital workflows preserve the philological rigor of traditional ancient world studies? How can semantic annotation enable us to answer new humanistic research questions?

We welcome contributions presenting theoretical and epistemological reflections, methods, tools, case studies, evaluation benchmarks, and interdisciplinary collaborations. In accordance with FAIR and Linked Open Data principles, the conference encourages open, interoperable, accessible, and sustainable research practices.

Submission Guidelines

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference.

Papers should be 750-1000 words excluding bibliography.

List of Topics

• Ontology-driven semantic annotation
• Standardisation
• Multilingual annotation practices
• Automatic and semi-automatic annotation
• Annotation of ancient geography
• FAIR/LOD data
• Semantic Web
• Augmented and Virtual Reality
• NER for historical languages
• RDF-based digital editions
• Methods, tools, and platforms

Organizing Committee

• Asst. Professor Maria Papadopoulou, TALOS-AI4SSH, University of Crete
• Rachel Milio, TALOS-AI4SSH, University of Crete

Publication

SA4AW 2027 authors will be invited to submit articles based on their papers, to be included in an edited volume published by Propylaeum eBooks.

Venue

The conference will be held onsite at the XENIA Student and Cultural Centre, Rethymno, Greece, and online.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to sa4aw.contact@gmail.com