Invitation to the workshop 6-7 October 2025

We cordially invite you to attend the scientific workshop Beyond Digital Humanities: Revolution, Revisionism or Political Agenda?, which will take place as part of the project “Ready for the future: understanding long-term resilience of the human culture” (RES-HUM) on Monday, October 6, and Tuesday, October 7, at the Hans Belting Library at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University (Veveří 470/28, ground floor of building K/L, 602 00 Brno).

 

We look forward to welcoming you,

 

Abstract:
The digital age has irrevocably transformed the media of scholarship, replacing pen, paper, and even physical books with computers, databases, GIS, and 3D reconstructions. This workshop, part of the RES-HUM project “Ready for the future: understanding the long-term resilience of the human culture” and organized by RE:CENT – Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, offers a critical assessment of these tools in Art History, Archaeology, and the humanities. It asks how digital media alter our ways of thinking, their relation to pre-modern epistemologies, memory, phenomenology, and subject/object paradigms, as well as the economies, ideologies, and agendas attached to them. Participants will reflect on the challenges arising when digital tools shift from complementary aids to methodological foundations of teaching and research. The program features three panel discussions: (I) Constructing the Myth of the Database: Between Natural Sciences and the Humanities, (II) Mapping the Past on the Present Environment: A Methodological Trap?, and (III) 3D Reconstructions: Precious Instruments or Visual Manipulation. Pre-circulated questions will encourage engagement with historiography, economic interests, bias, and driving ideologies, fostering dialogue on responsible praxis and the future integration of digital tools into humanistic scholarship.