Bari, January 31st - February 2nd, 2018

General information and location

The Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e le Culture Digitali (AIUCD) is pleased to announce the 2018 edition of its annual conference and invites all interested scholars to submit a proposal.

The AIUCD 2018 Conference will be held from 31st January to 2nd February 2018 in Bari, Italy, and the local organiser is the University of Bari. Pre-conference workshops will be held on 29th and 30th January.

The conference venue and all satellite events will be held at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Centro Polifunzionale Studenti (“Ex Palazzo delle Poste”), Piazza Cesare Battisti, 1, 70121 Bari.

Proposals must be sent in the form of an extended abstract (see below for details), using the ConfTool conference management system, accessible at:

http://www.conftool.net/aiucd2018.

For more information, please visit the Conference website at http://www.aiucd2018.uniba.it/ or send us an email at aiucd2018@aiucd.it.

Conference Topics

The main topic of the AIUCD 2018 Conference is Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age. Memory, Humanities and Technologies. The topic brings together interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary fields, and examines the role of cultural heritage in all its aspects in the digital age, the way in which the study and scientific research of humanistic knowledge (literary, historical, artistic, archaeological and philosophical) combines with different methodologies, logic and computer technologies and various types of media and digital resources. It also concerns the critical problems of digital memory, the re-thinking of contemporary digital culture the changing definition, enhancement, research and conservation of cultural heritage in the digital era, as well as the digital rebirth of humanistic culture.

While open to other topics related to Digital Humanities, proposals for contributions are particularly encouraged on the following:

-Interaction and integration of methods of statistical/quantitative analysis and formal logic methods in Humanities.

-Semantic web technologies and Linked Open Data in Humanities.

-Quantitative and stylometric analysis, topic modelling and clustering for literary texts, archival documents and cultural objects.

-Authorship attribution and automatic text classification.

-Applications of, and experiments with, data mining methodologies in historical, artistic and archaeological research.

-Network analysis and sentiment analysis applied to the Humanities.

-Interaction between Natural Language Processing technologies and data mining in the Humanities.

-Methods and techniques of visualization and their impact on knowledge transfer in Cultural Heritage and in the Humanities.

-Methodologies and applications of Natural Language and Text Processing of corpora in the Humanities.

-Computational analysis of multimedia resources: images, audio and video.

-Sustainability problems and strategies for research data: persistence, provenance and authenticity.

-Cultural and social impact of Humanities research produced with computational methods.

-Big Data methods and technologies in Cultural Heritage and in the Humanities.

-Internet of Things for Cultural Heritage and the Humanities.

-Landscape and long-term settlement: prospects and potential of digital cartography.

-Public use, dissemination and didactic mediation of humanistic cultures in the digital age.

-Digital narrative methods and techniques: storytelling and place telling.

-Methodologies and technologies of the digitization process for the production and preservation of digital cultural heritage.

The deadline for submitting proposals is September 30th (midnight) 2017. Notifications of acceptance will be sent to the authors by October 30th 2017.

The official languages of the Conference are Italian and English. However, it is possible to present in other languages if English slides are provided.

Proposal categories and submission

Proposals must be sent in the form of an extended abstract, using the ConfTool conference management system, accessible at: http://www.conftool.net/aiucd2018.

The Conference provides the following proposal categories:

-long proposal (30 mins: 20 mins + 10 mins for for questions and answers): it should discuss innovative methodologies and their theoretical foundations, experiences of analysis and applications that are methodologically significant within a discipline; presentations devoted to presenting a specific tool or resource are acceptable only if they include a thorough critical discussion of the methods used and/or a theoretical evaluation of the results obtained;

-short proposal (20 mins: 15 mins + 5 mins for questions and answers): it must present a mature research product or a research project;

-panel (90 mins, including questions and answers): a series of presentations (maximum 6) should describe, from a theoretical and methodological point of view, a specific topic or a critical presentation of the grounding, methods and results of a big project;

-poster: must primarily address the progress of an ongoing project or the technical details of a tool or of a digital resource;

-workshop and tutorial: in the two days prior to the Conference, one or two workshops or tutorials on topics or tools of interest to the DH community will be accepted.

Proposals will be evaluated through double-blind peer review by scholars in the Humanities, Computer Science and/or Digital Humanities.

The proposal evaluation will be carried out based on the following criteria:

-Relevance to the topic of the conference; consistency with the Digital Humanities and Digital Culture domains.

-Originality, relevance, or innovative approach.

-Methodological rigour, accurate description of the methodology; the research presented should be reproducible.

-Adequacy of the theoretical and conceptual approach to the reference domain.

-Consistency of arguments; clear definition and of the objectives; coherence between objectives and results.

-Critical analysis of the literature; a bibliography.

-Quality of any technical solutions proposed within the reference domain.

-Good balance between the Humanities and Computer Science components of the research.

-Structure  of the text; quality of writing; ease of understanding; explanations of  scientific language.

At the end of the evaluation process, the Program Committee may decide to move an accepted proposal to a different category of presentation.

To submit a proposal, please sign into ConfTool (http://www.conftool.net/aiucd2018). When submitting a proposal, authors must specify keywords from those suggested by the platform in order to facilitate the review process.

Proposal structure and formats

Proposals must clearly present the goals of the contribution, provide a brief overview of the state of the art, specify and discuss the methodology adopted and, where appropriate, the results obtained or expected.

The abstracts will be published in a book with an ISBN identifier. The most promising contributions  will be selected for publication as full articles in the AIUCD Umanistica Digitale journal (https://umanisticadigitale.unibo.it).

Proposals must also include a short bibliography. Figures or tables may be included. The length of the proposal varies depending on the type of proposal:

-Long paper proposal should be 1500-1800 words in length (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography);

-Short paper and poster proposals should be 800-1000 words in length (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography);

-Panel proposals should be 800-1000 words in length plus 200-250 words for each single presentation, (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography);

-Workshop or tutorial proposals should count 1000 words at least and include: a title and a short description of the content and its relevance to the conference and the DH community in general , complete information of all tutors with a brief description of the research interests and previous experience, requests for technical support at the conference, and whether the workshop will have its own Call for Participation.

When submitting the proposal, ConfTool also requires the provision of a short abstract (300 words). Proposals should be drafted according to the templates available at 

-Word: http://www.aiucd2018.uniba.it/content/abstract_template.docx

-ODT: http://www.aiucd2018.uniba.it/content/abstract_template.odt

which also includes editorial specifications.

The official languages of the AIUCD 2018 Conference are Italian and English, but it is possible to submit a proposal also in the following languages: French, German and Spanish. In these cases, it is mandatory to provide a short abstract in English in ConfTool.

Posters should be written in Italian or English. Posters will also need to clearly present the objectives of the project, provide a brief overview of the state of the art and the methodologies adopted and, where appropriate, the results obtained or expected. They must also contain a short bibliography.

The format is portrait A1 (841x594 mm). Posters will be displayed in a dedicated space at the Conference venue. Display panels will be provided. Please bring your poster already printed, as we are unable to provide a printing service. Personal laptop computers may be used in the poster exhibition area. If your presentation includes a laptop, please inform the organising committee on acceptance of your proposal.

Specific poster slam sessions will be scheduled in the Conference programme to give authors the opportunity to briefly introduce (max 2 minutes) their poster.

Giuseppe Gigliozzi Conference Bursary Awards

AIUCD will offer three bursaries awards of 250€ each for early-career scholars (students and non-tenured lecturers) presenting papers (long or short) at the conference. Eligible scholars can apply by selecting the relevant check-box at the bottom of the abstract submission form in ConfTool. Candidate papers will be selected by reviewers.

Prior to the conference, the AIUCD Board will make a preliminary review of all papers proposed by the reviewers, and will then verify their eligibility and compile a preliminary list of a maximum of 10 papers. Next, a panel of reviewers will be recruited from the AIUCD Board, the Program Committee members, the program session chairs, and other experienced participants attending the conference. During the course of the conference, one or more reviewers will attend and observe each candidate presentation and make recommendations to the Board. Winners will be selected by the Board at the end of the conference, and the results will be communicated during the General Assembly.

Please note that no more than one winner can be based at the organising institution.