Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica "Cognetti de Martiis"

The course takes advantage of and empowers the perspective of digital revolution for enhancing new knowledge building and abilities about heritage data and information in a digital society through an historical perspective. Its ambition is to meet the urgent demand of inclusiveness, pluralism and participation to cultural heritage identities, belongs and experiences by providing a knowledge baseline and a critical approach to the use of digital tools. For this purpose, its main aim is to advance knowledge, expertise and skills in digital-led analysis, interpretation and historical understanding of cultural heritage as well as spread of digital heritage through cultural projects.

The course - through both a theoretical and practical teachings - will enhance students’ understanding of the potential of digital heritage with a special focus on urban heritage. Digital urban history will be considered for analysing cities as physical, architectural, economic, political and social space, by considering the goal of a shared multi-cultural and multi-ethnic heritage. It will enrich the capacity of building analytical and critical perspectives in identifying processes, roots, and developments of digital heritage projects by providing specific expertise in creating new cultural projects for society and communities. The course will equip the students with a skill to select and use correct type of digital humanities methodologies depending on the scope, scale, and specific objectives of a heritage project.

Students will learn via case studies about digital heritage enquiry and solutions for fostering new critical understandings and enhancing public knowledge on heritage in society. Teachings will enable to conceive heritage project proposals – with an historical critical background – in digital environments, to address some existing tools for a heritage project design, to connect different elements and issues and different scales. Theoretical and practical learning will deal with understanding heritage in contexts, both cultural-historical and physical, with digital tools for representing data and information, and with multiple sources to critically interpret and analyse the complex scenarios. More specifically, lessons and practice will allow students experiencing how to fairly analyse, repurpose and disseminate GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) digital heritage.

The course is an introduction to the Digital Heritage field with an historical perspective and a focus on digital methodologies for advancing interpretations of (multi) cultural heritage and spreading research, while increasing collaborative approaches.  It focuses on a digital approach to surveys, research and know-how on tangible and intangible heritage. More specifically it presents how historical research in the Heritage field  can be improved by a digital approach and the use of digital technologies. The course will investigate digital heritage within this scope. For this purpose, the course deals with diverse types of heritage at different scales and types and explores how to exploit digitised and born-digital cultural heritage of GLAM.   

In order to face, into a domain still under development, the great challenge to effectively improve an integration of digital technologies with humanities methodologies in the cultural heritage field, the program deals with a theoretical and practical approach for exploring digital format on cultural heritage. Although some digital tools are widely in use, developments are needed for improving critical approaches to data as well as collaborative approaches and strict methodologies. A critical and accurate integration of digital approach and historical expertise is needed for the development of new reliable and inclusive understandings, to enable insights in the potential of cultural heritage for increasing public knowledge, awareness and resilience of cities and communities.

The course includes theoretical discussions plus practical exercises in which students will form project groups of 2 or 3 persons. Lessons will discuss diverse tools, including digital narratives, digital atlas, 3D models and gamification, for exploring the links between heritage of different scales and digital materials of different formats. For the student projects, the working groups will use GLAM digital collections in order to investigate potential and links among digital heritage and research on cultural heritage with an historical perspective. By considering their diverse digital skills, they will collaboratively develop digital projects about the assigned case study to formulate and respond to a historic curiosity about the city. A specific attention will be paid to Turin’s industrialisation and its heritage as a specific scenario. Students will work their own laptops computer with basic drawing software installed. Students will be assisted to work on themes and methodologies for shaping a virtual environment useful to link diverse primary sources and to experience/design tools useful for their management. The outcome will be a digital heritage project, and groups will be expected to make an oral presentation of their project.

Theoretical and practical parts will develop in an integrated manner. The general distribution will be as follows: Introduction to digital heritage (18 hours), Introduction to the case study and the practice (6 hours), practice (12 hours).

The grading will be based on following criteria: written test 30%, the deliverable of group practice 50%, oral presentation of the project 20%. The assessment will be done separately for each group member.