Call for Papers: Emotions in Digital Cultural Heritage

Despite a wide-spread and increasing recognition in cultural heritage practice and research that emotions play a fundamental role in how visitors and users experience cultural heritage, there is still relatively little research on how emotionally-engaging experiences are best supported; designed; and evaluated.

How can digital heritage tools and applications create emotional experiences that stimulate people’s curiosity, excitement, and empathy for the world today, as well as in the past? Is it possible for these digital experiences to lead to even more radical impacts including change in values, attitudes and beliefs and even personal transformation? What is the latest research on these outcomes, including rigorous models of practice to achieve and evaluate them? How is the related evidence collected? What there are research results indicating emotional impact, to what extent are these generalizable?

After years of focusing as a community in the cultural heritage sector on what people learn, we are recognizing that this is inexorably linked with how they feel, as it is this that they primarily remember after their visit. How are the two linked, and what other parameters affect emotional engagement? How can negative emotions also be given space, respected and integrated in the visitors’ experience, especially when dealing with ‘dark’ or ‘difficult’ heritage?

And what are the best methods for capturing users’ emotional responses? Can qualitative methods be effectively combined with quantitative ones? What is the role of psychometric measurements in this area and how can the data they yield be interpreted in a meaningful way? Can these be used by low-resourced cultural institutions outside the lab and in the natural setting of the gallery or heritage site?

The session is addressed to digital heritage practitioners and researchers who are working in this interdisciplinary area trying to either design and/or evaluate emotionally engaging experiences for diverse user communities.

Important Dates

• Title and 150-word abstract due: June 20, 2018
• 8-page papers due online: June 30, 2018 (submission via EasyChair, see: https://www.digitalheritage2018.org/DigitalHeritage2018submit.pdf)
• Notification: August 15, 2018
• Camera Ready Deadline: September 10, 2018

International Program Committee (confirmed):

– Angeliki Antoniou, Psychologist, University of Peloponnese, Greece
– Luigina Ciolfi, Professor of Human-Centred Computing, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
– Conny Graft, President Research and Evaluation, USA
– Sara Perry, Senior Lecturer, University of York, UK