Call for Contributions for the Digital History Conference 2026
Digital History – Doing Cultural Heritage
Every two years, the Working Group on Digital History within the Association of Historians in Germany (VHD) , together with partner institutions at alternating venues, organizes a large-scale Digital History conference. The event serves as a platform for discussing current developments in digital history within the German-speaking academic community, focusing particularly on disciplinary transformations and methodological implications. Previous conferences held in Göttingen / online (2021) , Berlin (2023) , and Halle (2024) have addressed concepts, methods, and critiques of digital history, the use of digital methods in historical research practice, and the relationship between Digital History and Citizen Science. In 2026, the conference will take place outside Germany for the first time. Hosted by the University of Salzburg—a key institution in the Austrian Digital Humanities community—the fourth conference will focus on the potential of digital access and computational historical research into cultural heritage.
Conference Theme
In recent years, digital approaches in the historical sciences have attracted particular attention in the fields of digital editions and text processing. By contrast, discussions about digital access to material sources and the broader domain of cultural heritage have been comparatively underrepresented. At the University of Salzburg, research on material culture in connection with digital tools and methods has a long tradition. Accordingly, the 2026 Digital History Conference places cultural heritage at its center and embeds it within a broad discussion of “Doing Cultural Heritage.” This also entails involving stakeholders beyond universities—such as museums, archives, heritage institutions, and memorial initiatives. These cultural and memory institutions are undergoing profound transformations through digitization, which require not only practical but also theoretical reflection. The Salzburg conference will thus focus on three major thematic areas: Documenting, Mediating, and Remembering.
Documenting historical records:
The first thematic area focuses on the documentation of historical holdings, encompassing the full range of historical sources. Particular attention is paid to the materiality of sources and to questions of how they can be digitally represented, semantically annotated, and analyzed in an appropriate way. This includes both text-bearing artifacts and material or visual sources such as buildings, landscapes, and much more. Approaches from ancient DNA research—i.e., the study of the DNA of historical humans, animals, plants, and microorganisms—may also be addressed. The goal is to explore diverse digital approaches, including digitization for improved scholarly access, transformation into digital 3D objects, digital offerings as new narrative layers or exhibition spaces, and the digital processing of historical sources. Possible topics include:
- Securing and cataloguing archival and museum holdings
- Digitally documenting material culture, images, and textual sources in their materiality
- Digital collections and born-digital objects
- Postcolonial debates in the context of archival and museum collections
- Research on ancient DNA and its implications for the historical sciences
Mediating cultural knowledge:
The use of digital mediation tools (including AI) has become an increasingly prominent research field in history education and public history. This includes not only the study of digital media objects (apps, VR, games, databases, etc.) as vehicles for learning and conveying history, but also empirical investigations into user practices and processes of reception in order to critically accompany the appropriation of digital culture. This second thematic area therefore aims to create space for research into digital mediation environments within the heritage sector—discussing both theoretical approaches and pragmatic implementations. At the same time, it seeks to strengthen empirical reception studies concerning engagement with the digital and to focus on the associated challenges. Using concrete case studies of “Doing Cultural Heritage,” mediation strategies employing digital tools are to be explored from multiple perspectives, foregrounding not only the technical dimension of historical offerings but also their historiographical framing and individual reception. Possible topics include:
- The use of AI or VR in different mediation contexts
- Historical learning in, through, and with digital media (production and reception)
- AI as both a point of departure and a site of reflection for history
- Digital Public History between digital hype, meaningful innovation, and commercial trivialization
- Empirical reception studies of digital mediation offerings
- VR as museum staging or game-based “reality”
- Digital Humanities tools for researching mediation processes
Remembering (im)material pasts:
Commemorative and memory culture in the 21st century can no longer escape the influence of digitization. Since the Instagram project @ichbinsophiescholl , debates about a contemporary and appropriate culture of remembrance in digital spaces have entered the academic mainstream. The range of activities is as diverse as memory culture itself. This third thematic area opens the conference to a wide variety of questions in this field. Possible topics include:
- Digital visualization of commemorative landscapes
- Digitally presented eyewitness testimony (e.g., holograms of Holocaust survivors)
- Digital mediation formats at memorial sites
- Digital games and representations of the past
- Digital archives and digitized sources as opportunities for a living culture of remembrance
- Ethical questions regarding the use of social media in commemorative practices
Call for Contributions
Call for Papers
Each presentation slot at the conference will comprise 20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for discussion. The conference language is German, with English contributions also welcome.
Please submit an abstract of 5,000–6,000 characters (including spaces, excluding bibliography) by 18 December 2025 to the following address: digihist2026@plus.ac.at
Please refrain from submitting pure project descriptions. For such submissions, please refer to the Call for Posters below.
Call for Posters
The poster session will take place on Tuesday, 29 September, in a joint morning session. Selected posters will be exhibited and presented in short pitches of up to 10 minutes. Throughout the conference, there will be opportunities—particularly for early career researchers—to engage in individual feedback sessions and open Q&A forums in separate spaces. Detailed information on this format will be provided to contributors in due time.
Please submit an abstract of 500–700 words by 18 December 2025 to the following address: digihist2026@plus.ac.at
The abstract should describe the content of your poster. Existing illustrations or visualizations may be included in the abstract.
Call for Workshops
The workshops will take place as part of the pre-conference programme on Monday, 28 September, and will run throughout the day. Each workshop will last approximately 180 minutes and be limited to 25 participants. Workshops should introduce tools and methods of digital history, with a particular focus on the computational documentation and exploration of cultural heritage.
Please submit an abstract of 500–1,200 words by 18 December 2025 to the following address: digihist2026@plus.ac.at
Your abstract should outline the content, tool or method to be introduced, as well as the general schedule and structure of the workshop. Please indicate clearly how your workshop contributes to the digital documentation and exploration of cultural heritage, or how the proposed tools and methods can be applied in this context.
Evaluation Criteria
A clear alignment with one or more of the three thematic areas of the conference is a prerequisite for acceptance.
Please indicate the thematic area(s) relevant to your submission. Multiple selections are possible.
The abstracts for papers and posters will be reviewed by a programme committee composed of experts from various fields according to the following criteria:
For Papers and Posters
| Criterion | Description |
|---|---|
| Scholarly Quality | The contribution engages with the current state of research and adheres to established academic standards. |
| Methodology and Theory | The methodological and theoretical approaches are appropriate to the research topic, applied in a result-oriented manner, and clearly described. |
| Originality | The contribution is innovative and makes an original contribution to the thematic scope of the conference. |
| Relevance | The contribution is of scholarly relevance for historical research. |
| Presentation | The contribution is clearly and engagingly written. |
For Workshops
| Criterion | Description |
|---|---|
| Scholarly Quality | The workshop introduces a current tool or method. |
| Relevance | The tool or method is relevant to digital history and, in particular, to the digital documentation and exploration of cultural heritage. |
| Presentation | The workshop demonstrates realistic time planning, a clear didactic concept, and a practical orientation. |
Please ensure a balanced proportion between input and interaction in your proposal and allocate sufficient time for hands-on activities.
If desired, you may provide preparatory materials and information separately to support efficient time management.
Workshops introducing open-source tools may be given preference.
Schedule for Programme Development and Publication of Papers and Posters
The conference programme will be compiled in two stages. In the first stage, all contributions will be selected by the programme committee based on the submitted abstracts. In the second stage, before the start of the conference, the authors of the selected papers and posters will submit their finalized versions. Publication guidelines and formatting instructions will be communicated to the respective contributors in due time. All papers and posters will be published in open access.
| What | Date |
|---|---|
| Publication of the Call for Contributions | 27 October 2025 |
| Deadline for abstract submissions | 18 December 2025 |
| Review of abstracts | 22 December 2025 – 31 January 2026 |
| Notification of acceptance | 1 February 2026 |
| Publication of the conference programme | 15 April 2026 |
| Conference registration | 15 April – 18 September 2026 |
| Submission of finalized versions | 18 September 2026 |
| Conference dates | 28 September – 1 October 2026 |
| Submission of publication-ready versions | 31 December 2026 |
| Publication of contributions | from January 2027 onward |
Contact
Conference Office
Department of History
Rudolfskai 42
A-5020 Salzburg
Austria
Tel.: +43 (0) 662-8044-4735 (Dr Karoline Döring)
Tel.: +43 (0) 662-8044-4730 (Dr Livia Heilingbrunner, BA MA)
Email: digihist2026@plus.ac.at