6.2 Futuring Digital Cultural Heritage

Corresponding Chairs

Marco Mason, Northumbria University 

Raffaella Trocchianesi, Politecnico Milano ITA

Co-Chairs

Vince Dziekan, Monash University, AUS

Ross Parry, University of Leicester UK

Abstract

Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs) now operate in a condition where digitality has become so pervasive and infrastructural that it often disappears precisely because it is everywhere as GLAMs function in a deeply mediatized, networked, and digitally mature world.

This theme investigates how design operates within GLAMs as shaped by ongoing digital transformation – viewed not simply as a technological objective but as something thoroughly embedded in organisational practices, thinking, and culture. This shift toward what has been conceptualised as the “post-digital museum” (Ross Parry) opens new territory for design researchers: not merely to support digitisation projects, but to critically and creatively rethink how design engages with key challenges, including:

• hybrid/distributed visitor experiences;

• multisensory engagement (including “aural diversity”);

• (digital) sustainability;

• equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI) and ethics;

• co-participatory and interdisciplinary practices within GLAM organisations. 

Digital transformation is also entangled with the emergence of AI, which challenges traditional notions of agency and creativity. A posthuman perspective (Fiona Cameron) invites us to reconsider museum practices as socio-technical assemblages (Mason & Dziekan, 2025), prompting new questions around:

• novel curatorial practices;

• redefined skills, roles, and interdisciplinary (posthuman) practices;

• innovative design attitudes and methods to reimagine approaches to preserving, valorising, and promoting cultural heritage.

Design plays a crucial role in this landscape as an embedded way of thinking, making, and envisioning. Designers and researchers are at the forefront of reconfiguring what museums are and how they operate. In this light, the tools, methods, practices, and culture of design are helping GLAMs navigate this complexity.

Keywords

Cultural Digital Heritage; Museum Digital Transformation; Artificial Intelligence and Post-human design; Phygital experience design; Aural Diversity; Design-as-practice

References

Mason, M., & Dziekan, V. (2025). Museums and Design practices. Routledge. London.

Vermeeren, A. P., Calvi, L., Sabiescu, A., Trocchianesi, R., Stuedahl, D., Giaccardi, E., & Radice, S. (2018). Future museum experience design: Crowds, ecosystems and novel technologies. In Springer international publishing (pp. 1–16). 

Calvi, L., Vermeeren, A., & Sabiescu, A. (2025). Transformative Museum Experiences. Springer.

Ahang, Y., & Trocchianesi, R. (2023). Perspectives of sound: Promoting social inclusion under the principle of “Access for all” in museums. DIID - Disegno Industriale Industrial Design, 84–91.

Parry, R., & Dziekan, V. (2021). Critical digital: Museums and their postdigital circumstance. In Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado (Ed.), Art, museums & digital cultures: Rethinking change (pp. 16–26). Lisboa. This article introduce: Parry, R., & Dziekan, V. (Eds.). (n.d.). Critical perspectives on museums and digital technology [Book series]. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Perspectives-on-Museums-and-Digital-Technology/book-series/CPMDT