UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage
The main objectives of the newly established UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Informatics at the Cyprus University of Technology over the next years are to:
- Carry out a wide-reaching program of awareness raising and knowledge-sharing programs on the role of Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) in the Eastern Mediterranean region and beyond, utilizing conferences and events, web and social media channels, academic exchanges and all possible media publicity vehicles.Introduce model DCH curricula (‘Cultural Informatics’) at vocational, undergraduate and postgraduate levels and extend course availability, teaching and study facilities to students internationally through state-of-the-art e-Learning.
- Define, extend and carry out a program of research in digital heritage which will further UNESCO’s cultural heritage agenda in the region and to impact its key objectives.
- Extend to communities across the region usable and affordable systems for telling the stories of their own heritage and expressing their identity online, in a context of inter-communal cooperation.
The Chair will introduce and extend through e-Learning, higher education programmes (BSc, MSc) in Cultural Informatics, needed to enable DCH to work effectively. This will lead to a substantial body of PhD and post-doctoral research in key aspects of DCH, including digitization, data acquisition, processing, modelling, archiving, visualization, preservation and protection, analysis, interpretation, storytelling, use/re-use.
Topics of emphasis will include: documentation (metadata, ontologies, semantics, linked data) and the applications of 3D/4D, Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and crowdsourcing/Citizen Science. The needs of audiences such as cultural organisations (archives, libraries, museums, monuments and sites) and the communities they serve, will be a primary focus, alongside those of people working in the field of Digital Humanities, including the issues of multilingualism that impact them.
The work proposed for the Chair corresponds closely with UNESCO Strategic Objective 7 (2014-2025): Protecting, promoting and transmitting heritage by working to ensure transmission of heritage assets of all kinds – natural and cultural, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, as well as documentary – to future generations because of their social value and the way in which they embody identity and belonging and using them to promote social stability, peace building, recovery from crisis situations and sustainable development strategies. It is also closely relevant to other Strategic Objectives such as SO1 (education systems to foster high quality and inclusive lifelong learning for all) and SO4 (strengthening science, technology and innovation systems).