UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association: 2026 Annual Event

The 2026 Annual Event will take place at the University of Southampton on 15-16 June 2026. The theme for this year’s Annual Event is ‘Sustainability’.

The last decade has seen an expansion of how we understand sustainability working across the arts and humanities. In addition to longstanding issues in digital humanities and cultural heritage in sustaining infrastructures, research teams and projects, other vital societal issues have emerged including digital preservation, climate justice and ethical computing. These pose important considerations for digital humanities and digital cultural heritage research and practice, which the DHA has promoted through community interest groups, governance working groups and other activities. As this year’s host, the University of Southampton is well positioned to support creative and critical conversations about sustainability, since it hosts a network of institutes investigating digital and computational practices, including the Software Sustainability Institute and conference co-organisers the Digital Humanities Hub.

This year’s event invites contributors to reflect on the theme of Sustainability, in its broadest conceptualisation. We encourage contributions addressing practices, methods and theories that promote sustainability, from researchers and practitioners in digital humanities and digital cultural heritage. Our aim is to promote interdisciplinary conversations about these critical issues, and to foreground these as an opportunity to share and create best practice. Since issues of sustainability require grassroots, community responses, we are interested in fostering broader understandings of digital methods, practices and technologies that enable critical reflections about how sustainability in digital humanities and digital cultural heritage intersects with broader social justice perspectives.