Legal and Ethical Challenges in Digital Cultural Heritage

The Digital Challenges Seminar Series, organized by the Digital Heritage unit of the Heritage Pasts and Futures group at the Faculty of Arts, in cooperation with the Jantina Tammes School,  aims to put scholars and experts from different disciplines in contact to tackle common challenges in digital applications and brainstorm solutions and best strategies.

This inaugural seminar examines the ethical and legal challenges of digital heritage and the twofold implications of digitisation in terms of accessibility and democratisation. While digital tools promote access and knowledge democratisation, they also risk perpetuating inequities, raising issues of ownership, cultural misappropriation, and technological disparities that may unintentionally reinforce dominant cultural narratives and limit the very access they aim to foster. Marking two decades since UNESCO’s Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, this seminar will critically examine current legal frameworks and advocate for policy reforms and community-driven approaches to foster ethical and inclusive digital practices. It will also address best practices for navigating challenging contexts, such as how to engage with communities that hold profoundly different cultural perspectives or conflicting views, or how to handle ethical dilemmas when consultation with rightful stakeholders is not feasible, such as in cases involving digitised human remains.

Participants will delve into these complex topics through a keynote presentation and lectures featuring representative case studies, followed by roundtable discussions to collaboratively explore solutions and their implications for research and practice.

The keynote speaker, Dr Vanessa Tünsmeyer (University of Groningen, Faculty of Law), is an expert in cultural heritage law, with a focus on UNESCO treaties, cultural and indigenous rights, comparative approaches to the restitution and repatriation of colonial-era cultural heritage.

The detailed programme will be announced soon.

For any inquiries about the event, you may contact the event organiser, dr. Manuela Ritondale (m.ritondale rug.nl).