CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

‘Using Visual AI Applied to Digital Archives’ , EYCON Special Issue

Deadline for Abstracts: 18 December 2022

Deadline for Submissions (if accepted): 15 April 2023

We are inviting abstracts for a Special Issue on the topic of Using Visual AI Applied to Digital Archives for inclusion in a peer-reviewed journal. This Special Issue is part of the EyCon project, funded by AHRC in the UK and LABEX in France. We want to offer an interdisciplinary forum to explore innovative technologies, methodologies and practices applying visual AI in digital archives, and the digital humanities and social sciences more broadly. We welcome work on visual AI covering all topics relating to digital archives, including media, social and cultural records, social media images, forms of digital communication, sensitivity review and censorship.

This issue seeks to bring together a range of disciplines (e.g. digital humanities, cultural heritage, archival studies, information studies, computer science), practices and sectors to explore the latest visual AI technologies being applied to digital and image archives across the globe, to tackle the challenges in digital archiving, preservation and accessibility. We particularly encourage submissions from professionals in the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). 

The EyCon project will host a final workshop on the theme of Visual AI applied to Digital Archives at Imperial War Museums (London) in June 2023. The authors selected for the Special Issue are invited to attend, but it is not a requirement for submission to the Special Issue.

Topics and Themes

This Special Issue will appeal to academics and practitioners working in a range of disciplines involving digital humanities, visual AI and images, including cultural heritage workers, arts professionals and scholars interested in issues relating to visual digital resources and their impact upon curation, education, engagement, and outreach. We invite submissions of both theoretical and practical approaches, displaying innovative research and state of the art methodologies, and welcome submissions from early career researchers.

Topics and issues to be addressed include but are not limited to:

• Case Studies on innovative visual AI technologies applied to digitised and born-digital archives
• Sensitivity review, harmful images and censorship
• Artificial Intelligence and visual records
• Analysis of more traditional methods applied to visual records in digital archives 
• Evaluations / assessments of visual AI technologies and/or digital cultural resources
• Addressing user needs and experiences (audiences / skillsets / awareness)
• Models of access to visual digital collections
• Collaborative / Interdisciplinary approaches to current technologies / methodologies
• AI and the curation of visual image / photography / digital resources
• Working practises with digital image archives / collections
• Testing new methodologies
• Updating existing technologies
• Co-creation / Co-designing new approaches to current issues in digital image collections
• Measuring digital image resource usage
• Evaluating impact

Abstracts

Please email your 300–word abstract and a CV to eycon.project@mailbox.lboro.ac.uk along with your name and contact email address by 18 December 2022.

Organisers

The theme of this Special Issue is informed by the EyCon project’s activities and aims. The EyCon project aims at harnessing visual AI tools to analyse a large corpus of photographs.  EyCon’s database will include thousands of historical photographs documenting armed violence, from 1890 to 1918. The project is partnering with a network of archival institutions in France and in the UK, and is co-funded by AHRC/Labex Passés dans le Présent joint grant in a partnership with a Université de Paris Idex “chaire environnée”. EyCon is co-ordinated by UK PI Dr Lise Jaillant(Loughborough University) and France PI Dr Julien Schuh (Université Paris Nanterre), working closely with Co-I Prof Daniel Foliard. Our Project Partners include Archives nationales d’outre-mer; Imperial War Museums; Wellcome Collection; Musée de Quai Branly Jacques Chirac; La Contemporaine; Service Historique de la Défense.

Paper Submissions (if accepted)

Submission of a manuscript will be held to imply that it contains unpublished original material (material already published in translation should not be submitted as part of this definition) and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Contributions should not normally exceed 9,000 words in length for full papers.  

Editor: Dr Lise Jaillant (Loughborough University, UK)

Important Dates:

Abstract Deadline: 18 December 2022

Decision Date: Late February 2023 [provisional]

Full Version Deadline: 15 April 2023 [provisional]

Expected Publication Date: Winter 2023 [provisional]

Please address all informal inquiries to eycon.project@mailbox.lboro.ac.uk

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