Venice Summer School on Digital and Public Humanities
Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities, Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

The Summer School aims at providing advanced and in-depth training to students and scholars in theories, technologies and methods applied to historical monuments, artifacts and texts in the interdisciplinary field of Digital and Public Humanities, focussing on cultural, archeological, historical, literary, and artistic materials from Venetian sites and cultural heritage institution. The school will give the participants the opportunity to engage in debates about digital cultural heritage and public humanities while enhancing their competences and skills of digitizing materials and sources and for modeling, analysing and visualizing multimedia humanities data.

Structure:
The VeDPH summer school is divided into four thematic strands:

(1) digital textual scholarship, focussing on methods and technologies for the digitisation, edition and analysis of textual sources, including inscriptions, manuscripts, prints and archival documents. This strand includes a visit of the Marciana National Library.

(2) digital and public history, focussing on the application of digital techniques and a ‘public’ approach to the development and presentation of historical research. It will include an exploration of the issues related to public engagement and dissemination beyond the classroom, an evaluation of digital tools used for the study of the past, and an examination of the new role played by digital and public historians inside and outside the academia. This strand includes a visit to M9-Museo del ‘900 in Mestre.

(3) digital art history
This strand focuses on the technological development and its cultural implications which occured in the arts sector over the last decades. In doing this, the digital aspect is approached both on the side of artistic production and the art system as well as on the side of art historical representation. The issues of technological change, digital nativity, virtual realms and digital tools will be discussed at length and put in the context of past and recent artistic productions, arts institutions and public sprawl. Both the theoretical debate and practical tools for digital art historians shall be explored by means of lectures and labs. The strand includes a visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice to give the students a concrete example of new digital and public approaches in art institutions.  Eventually, the strand includes the opening of an art exhibition on the analog-digital relationship by Italian painter Aldo Sergio expressly organized for the Venice Centre for Digital and Public History.

(4) digital (and public) archaeology, focussing on quantitative methods and digital approaches to the archaeological domain.
It is structured by a series of plenary lectures, parallel workshops, and site visits. Lectures will describe the greater context in which these theories and methods will be applied: a world in which the work of scholars is routinely aided by computer-assisted techniques and in which digital methods help us to tackle old issues in a new way, and open novel perspectives and research questions. With a learning-by-doing approach, participants will reflect upon every stage of the realisation of a digital object and upon how to make use the newly acquired methods and skills in own projects. Lessons and labs will be focused on modeling, retrieving, analysing, visualising, and publishing data created on relevant sites of the city of Venice (such as the Biblioteca Marciana, the Archivio di Stato, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Ghetto) and its surroundings (such as M9 Museum in Mestre, the excavations at Torcello and Altino). Legal questions of intellectual property and publication licences will be covered as well as the latest web developments such as semantic web and linked open data technologies in order to evaluate different data models for cultural heritage objects.

Lecturers:
The lectures are delivered by expert scholars from VeDPH and DSU, by visiting scholars and external guest experts. The keynote speakers (plenary sessions) are Serge Noiret (European University Institute, Florence), Elena Pierazzo (Université de Tours), and Fabio Vitali (Università di Bologna).
Guest lecturers include Peter Bell (Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Mirco Carrattieri (Istituto Ferruccio Parri, Milano), Frédéric Clavert (C2DH, University of Luxembourg), Lisa Dieckmann (Universität zu Köln), Francesco Frizzera (Museo della Guerra, Rovereto), Erma Hermens (Rijks Museum Amsterdam), Angus Mol (University of Leiden), Giampaolo Salice (Università di Cagliari), Johanna Aufreiter/Miroslav Hvatal (Galerie Belvedere, Vienna), et al.

Availability of positions:
Each strand will include 15 participants maximum.

Participation Fees:
Standard rate €300

Scholarships:
14 scholarships are available with an amount of € 600 each (gross payment). The fourteen winners will be officially awarded only after admission registration by the school. In case of renouncement the scholarship will be assigned to the first substitute in order with the final ranking. The recipients are obliged to follow minimum 75% of the Summer School program.

How to Apply and Important Dates:
The application must be submitted via e-mail to: didattica.dsuunive.it or via PEC (certified email) to: protocollopec.unive.it and bear the subject header: Application for Admission to VeSSDPH;

The following documents may also be attached to the application:
- Application Form
- Motivation letter
- MA Diploma (or equivalent)
- CV evidence in experiences, skills and knowledge in the field
- Copy of valid ID or passport

Application deadline: 06.03.2020

Further information:
https://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/comunicazione/cafoscarinews/img/grafica/Call_for_Application_VeSSDPH.pdf