Growing numbers of digital projects are engaging with cultural heritage materials, from digitising historic photos of archaeological sites to recording data on sites under threat from climate change or conflict. However, because of the nature of research funding, which tends to be tied to particular projects or research aims, often these projects do not collaborate with each other as much as they could.

The Premodern Digital Cultural Heritage Network aims to promote collaboration between open-access (i.e. freely accessible) digital projects based in the UK and in Ireland that focus on ancient and medieval tangible cultural heritage (i.e. art, architecture, and archaeology). The Network and its activities were funded by a networking grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC). The Network is run by members of the team behind Manar al-Athar (‘Guide to Archaeology’) photo-archive of images of archaeological sites and buildings in the Middle East and North Africa, based at the University of Oxford. the Co-Principal Investigators are Dr Ine Jacobs (Oxford) and Dr Sean Leatherbury (UCD); Dr Miranda Williams is Co-Investigator. Participant projects include a range of digital projects based in the UK and Ireland. Collectively, these projects make hundreds of thousands of images and other materials visible and accessible to a range of users.

In 2020-2021, the Network hosted four workshops, allowing members of the participant digital projects to gather on Zoom and discuss issues of sustainability and funding, linked open data, community engagement, and cultural heritage teaching in schools. Invited speakers from other digital heritage projects–the Pelagios Network, Our Irish Heritage, UCD Access Classics, and Heritage in Schools–provided focal points for our discussions.

Several research projects have emerged from the workshops. First, the organisers of the Network are producing articles on collaborative practices between digital heritage projects and on the use of digital projects for research. Second, we have put together open-access teaching materials to help teachers working in secondary (second-level) education include heritage (especially built heritage) topics in their classes.

While the Network’s workshops have come to an end for now, we hope to continue to plan events in the future to produce opportunities for further collaboration. In the meantime, we hope the various research projects will be of use for for museum and cultural heritage professionals, secondary school students, academic researchers, and others. If you would like to offer feedback, please get in touch with us by email.

This project was funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council under the ‘UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Networking Call’ (grant numbers AH/V002201/1 and IRC/V002201/1)