CfP: Museum Media(ting): Emerging Technologies and Difficult Heritage

This edited volume with the working title “Museum Media(ting): Emerging Technologies and Difficult Heritage” examines theoretical approaches and case studies that demonstrate how emerging technologies can display, reveal and negotiate difficult, dissonant, negative or undesirable heritage. We are particularly interested in how emerging technologies in museums have the potential to reveal unheard or silenced stories, challenge preconceptions, encourage emotional responses, introduce the unexpected, and overall provide alternative experiences. By emerging technologies, we refer to contemporary advances and innovations in technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, holograms, artificial intelligence, gamification, smart systems, etc.
How can museums, with the help of technology, manage to tell unheard stories, touch upon issues of difficult heritage, and narrate stories of unprivileged groups of people such as minorities, women, LBTG, immigrants, etc.? How can museums explore alternative sides of history, different from the political/ diplomatic/ military history which is the norm, such as social history, history of education, history of migration, etc., giving therefore emphasis not so much on the knowledge/ collection of information, but to multiperspectivity, inclusiveness, tolerance and social cohesion? How and to what extent the use of technology in museums/ art spaces, facilitates the understanding of issues dealing with contested history? How can emerging technologies provide not only cognitive experiences but also affective ones?
The volume may include chapters that deal with the following themes:
  • Emerging technologies in museums
  • Innovative interactive media/ installations
  • Art and technology for difficult heritage
  • Crowdsourcing/ participatory methods
  • Oral histories and emerging technologies
  • Deep mapping approaches
  • Affective responses
  • Cultural tourism and difficult or dark heritage
  • Alternative experiences
  • Evaluation studies of specific applications of emerging technologies used for exploring difficult heritage in museums
  • Other themes related to the key questions of the call
The papers can be theoretical in nature or/ and explore specific case studies. We encourage proposals that demonstrate specific uses of emerging technologies in museums and other cultural sites as well as evaluation studies.
The volume will be edited by Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (Cyprus University of Technology/ Research Centre on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies - RISE), Antigone Heraclidou (Research Centre on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies - RISE) and Alexandra Bounia (UCL Qatar/ University of the Aegean) and will be published by a well-known academic publisher.
To submit an abstract please send a 500-word abstract (including references) and a short bio for each author (up to 70 words each) to Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert and Antigone Heraclidou   by July 30th 2019. Applicants will receive a response within a month’s time. The selected authors will be expected to deliver a full paper (length: 6000- 8000 words) by January 15th 2020.
Contact Info: 
To submit an abstract please send a 500-word abstract (including references) and a short bio for each author (up to 70 words each) to Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert and Antigone Heraclidou by July 30th 2019.