Past for the Future: Digital Pathways in Cultural Heritage

A special issue of Heritage (ISSN 2571-9408).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 1341

Special Issue Editors

Department of Archives, Libraries and Museums (ALM) Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Uppsala University, P.O. Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden
Interests: digital technology with historical disciplines; including art history

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Guest Editor
National Hellenic Museum, Chicago, IL, USA
Interests: Greek and Orthodox Christian history; practice in the diaspora

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Guest Editor Assistant
University of the People Pasadena, Pasadena, CA, USA
Interests: digital technologies; history

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue grew out of a conference at the Swedish Institute of Athens and seeks to explore how digital humanities currently operate within the study and management of the past. This transdisciplinary volume will include contributions from archeology, history, and cultural heritage and aims to bring together scholars and practitioners to explore how technology is shaping our study, understanding, and experience of the past today in fields as diverse as archeological fieldwork, video gaming, archival research, and social media. With a focus on case studies, this Special Issue seeks to move beyond theoretical pondering to understand the real-world implications of technology in the study of the past.

This volume explores themes that in­clude, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. Visualizing Interfaces: Digitized manuscripts and interactive maps;
  2. Augmented and Virtual Reality, Gaming, and Mixed Media;
  3. Implications, Infrastructures, Policies, and Citizen Science (i.e., archives and creative and cultural heritage industries).

The Special Issue aims to contextualize digitization within academia, museums/​cultural institutions, and tourism and to open the discussion surrounding new trends and unexplored frontiers in digital cultural heritage.

With both media and methods in mind, our ultimate purpose is to confront the current state of digital research infrastructures (libraries, museums, and archives, the incorporation of VR/​AR, literacies, space, and place as sociotechnical components) and to discuss the importance of openness and linked data on an international level. Historical records can be biased and subject to national and continental schemes, and our understanding of place, history, and culture are bound up with issues of historical representations and identity formation within Western frameworks. Digital futures provide us with an opportunity to move beyond these barriers if we are willing to engage in productive, multidisciplinary conversations. This Special Issue endeavors to be an important part of this conversation.

Dr. Anna Foka
Dr. Katherine Kelaidis
Guest Editors

Dr. Georgia Xekalaki
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • cultural heritage
  • humanities
  • museums
  • history
  • archives
  • digital
  • virtual
  • visualizing interfaces

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

26 pages, 12914 KiB  
Article
Copy/Past: A Hauntological Approach to the Digital Replication of Destroyed Monuments
by Giovanni Lovisetto
Heritage 2025, 8(7), 255; https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8070255 - 27 Jun 2025
Viewed by 1009
Abstract
This article offers a critical analysis of two ‘replicas’ of monuments destroyed by ISIL in 2015: the Institute for Digital Archaeology’s Arch of Palmyra (2016) and the lamassu from Nimrud, exhibited in the Rinascere dalle Distruzioni exhibition (2016). Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s formulation [...] Read more.
This article offers a critical analysis of two ‘replicas’ of monuments destroyed by ISIL in 2015: the Institute for Digital Archaeology’s Arch of Palmyra (2016) and the lamassu from Nimrud, exhibited in the Rinascere dalle Distruzioni exhibition (2016). Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s formulation of hauntology and Umberto Eco’s theory of forgery, this study examines the ontological, ethical, and ideological stakes of digitally mediated replication. Rather than treating digital and physical ‘copies’ as straightforward reproductions of ancient ‘originals’, the essay reframes them as specters: material re-appearances haunted by loss, technological mediation, and political discourses. Through a close analysis of production methods, rhetorical framings, media coverage, and public reception, it argues that presenting such ‘replicas’ as faithful restorations or acts of cultural resurrection collapses a hauntological relationship into a false ontology. The article thus shows how, by concealing the intermediary, spectral role of digital modeling, such framings enable the symbolic use of these ‘replicas’ as instruments of Western technological triumphalism and digital colonialism. This research calls for a critical approach that recognizes the ontological peculiarities of such replicas, foregrounds their reliance on interpretive rather than purely mechanical processes, and acknowledges the ideological weight they carry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Past for the Future: Digital Pathways in Cultural Heritage)
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