Education 
Educational programme and summer school

Venice Summer School in Digital and Public Humanities 
Venice, 8-12 July, 2024

The Venice Summer School in Digital and Public Humanities provides advanced and in-depth training in theories, technologies and methods applied to historical monuments, artefacts and texts.
Focussing on cultural, archaeological, historical, literary, and artistic materials from Venetian sites and cultural heritage institutions, participants will engage in debates about digital cultural heritage and public humanities while enhancing their competences and skills in digitising materials and sources and in modelling, analysing and visualising multimedia humanities data. 

Contents and schedule  

The Summer School takes place at historical sites and cultural venues across the city of Venice and its surroundings. Each day is dedicated to a specific academic field: archaeology, history, art history and textual scholarship. Teaching formats include lectures, hands-on workshops, guided tours and experimental performances. Units are planned and delivered by local experts and invited specialists. All classes will be taught in English. The programme includes “Meet the Expert” sessions for discussing the participants’ individual research projects with domain experts.

Eligibility and admission criteria

The Summer  School warmly welcomes PhD students, postdocs and practitioners from the private, public, and non-governmental sectors. Applicants must hold at least a Master’s degree or equivalent at the time of application. Precedence will be given to those candidates whose cover letter will show that their research projects or profession will benefit from the Digital and Public Humanities methods that they will learn during the summer school. A fair balance among genders and among disciplinary backgrounds will be preserved.

Availability of positions

The School will host max. 25 participants.

Participation costs

  • NO fees
  • costs for site entries (incl. M9, Guggenheim, 3-days entrance Biennale): ca. 40 EUR
  • optional booking of a single room at Camplus (up to 6 nights): 85 EUR (per person / per night, light breakfast incl.) 

How to apply 

Your application must contain:

  • a curriculum vitae (max. 2 pages); 
  • a cover letter (max. 2 pages) stating your motivations for joining  the School and your expectations about it.

Your CV and cover letter should be sent in pdf format to  vedph@unive.it (subject line “Application VeSSDPH 2024”).

Important dates  

  • Deadline for applications: 15 April 2024 (11:59 p.m. CEST) 
  • Notification of acceptance: 3 May 2024
  • Summer School: 8-12 July 2024 

Programme

Day 1 - Gazing Upon Venice: an Eye-Tracking Experiment

Area 1 - Digital and Public Archaeology

  • Opening Keynote: Maurizio Forte (Duke University)
  • Gazing Upon Venice: an Eye-Tracking Experiment
  • Data acquisition with eye-tracking in Venice, data processing and analysis

Day 2 - The Shape of Knowledge: Editing Paul Klee’s Sketchbooks

Area 2 - Digital and Public Textual Scholarship 

  • Capturing the Text: Imaging Technologies and Artificial Intelligence
  • Text Encoding and Prompt Engineering  
  • Linking the Data
  • Publishing the Edition: Tools and Technologies for Text Visualisation
  • Aperitivo Talk: Peter Robinson (University of Saskatchewan)

Day 3 - Walking in the Past. Exploring History through Screens and Mobile Phones

Area 3 - Digital and Public History

  • Guided tour of M9-Museum of the 20th century, Mestre
  • Hidden Venice app activity
  • Keynote: Fabrizio Nevola (University of Exeter)

Day 4 - Museum with a view. A Framework to Enrich and Describe Images

Area 4 - Digital and Public Art History

  • Introduction & case studies at the Guggenheim Museum
  • Image acquisition, description and reuse in museum space: frameworks and standards

Day 5 - At the Arsenale

  • Digitising the Piraeus Lion
  • Tour of the 60th Biennale, International Art Exhibition “Foreigners everywhere”
  • Experiential workshop “Media Artivism: Towards Postdigital Rebellion”
  • Closing Keynote: Carolina Fernandez Castillo (University Carlos III of Madrid)

Master's degree in Digital and Public Humanities

The new 2nd cycle degree programme in Digital and Public Humanities will held completely in English. It offers the opportunity to apply digital methods and computational practices on the  studies of literature, arts  and history, focusing on the most important aspects of the cultural heritage and the inter-relations with social identity, cultural landscapes and communities.

The degree programme 2023/2024 provides a cross-disciplinary curriculum that promotes and support the dissemination of cultural knowledge; it inspires new perspectives and approaches to planning, analysing and interpreting textual, visual and multimedia contents. 

The students will acquire the skills in

  • creating, managing, enhancing and disseminating cultural contents
  • digital publishing
  • creating and building multimedia cultural resources
  • web communication of humanities for general public
file pdfBrochure1.11 M

Professional master in Digital Humanities

The professional master in Digital Humanities born in 2015, thanks to the collaboration of Department of Humanities and Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics of Ca’ Foscari, offers an educational path devoted to application and development of digital tools for humanities, like as history, art history, philology, archival studies, museology. The professional master in Digital and Public Humanities ceased in 2019/20.