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 conferences 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 Život umjetnosti, 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’ 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.

This year’s 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’s 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.

This conference is organised by the Institute of Art History, Zagreb, the University of Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE), Zagreb and DARIAH-HR.