It was a busy week Graz, Austria, from 9th-15th July as the international community of Digital Humanities scholars gathered at the University of Graz and Messe Congress Graz for the 2023 Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) Annual Conference #DH2023! The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Collaboration as Opportunity’, and we left feeling inspired by all the potential opportunities for collaboration and research outlined throughout the week.
Several pre-conference workshops took place on 9th, 10th, and 11th July, including an Intavia workshop entitled “Smashing the Silos! The Future of Cultural Heritage Information and Visualization” which was designed to reflect on novel developments and challenges in the field of cultural heritage information and visualization. An OpenMethods workshop entitled “Amplifying Unheard Voices in Digital Humanities: an OpenMethods Edit-a-thon” took place which invited Digital Humanists to explore the OpenMethods metablog as an innovative publication forum to strengthen the representation of traditionally underrepresented languages.
Our President of the Board of Directors, Toma Tasovac, and Anne Baillot fulfilled their roles as Programme Committee Chairs of #DH2023, and DARIAH shared a booth with CLARIN-ERIC in the breakout space, where we discussed what role DARIAH plays as European Research Infrastructure Consortium for the DH community, how to join its activities or how to use its services, such as DARIAH Campus and SSH Open Marketplace with conference participants.
The opening keynote address was delivered by Professor Sarah Kenderdine (DARIAH Scientific Board member) and was entitled “Two-Fold Revolutions: Computational Museology in the Age of Experience” and covered panoramas and stereoscopic photos, Shaw’s virtual museum (1989), and on to the future with digital twins, text-to-image generators, and deepfakes.
DARIAH was well represented across the week: DARIAH Director Agiatis Bernardou chaired and presented several sessions, former Directors Jennifer Edmond and Frank Fischer also spoke, chaired and presented posters during the Thursday evening poster session, while the Bibliographical Data DARIAH-EU Working Group presented their recent findings in a panel entitled “Fostering Collaboration to Enable Bibliodata-driven Research in the Humanities”. Training and Education Officer Vicky Garnett chaired the Thursday morning panel on “Collaboration”, while European Project Officer Laure Barbot led the Tuesday pre-conference workshop entitled “Creating a DH workflow in the SSH Open Marketplace”.
The closing keynote address was delivered by Claire Fernandez (European Digital Rights) “Contesting Power in the Digital Age: The Role of Civil Society in Europe” and prompted a stimulating discussion during the Q&A before the conference’s closing remarks, in which the fantastic organising committee, hosts, and volunteers who made #DH2023 possible were thanked with a standing ovation.
Despite the busyness of the week, we were fortunate to find time for the Conference Banquet at Schlossberg which treated us to some beautiful sunset views of Graz, and we also enjoyed delicious vegan ice cream to counteract the high temperatures throughout the week. We left the week with an immensely positive sense of the opportunities afforded by collaboration and communication between DH scholars and beyond, and are already looking forward to #DH2024, which will be held in Washington DC, with the theme of “Reinvention & Responsibility” from August 6-9th, 2024!
