Outputs of Humanities and Social Science projects of transnational interest often include some kind of online product: Virtual archives, websites, multimodal publications, and social media presences are intended to digitally bridge what physically could only be reached by a select few. But how do these outputs actually account for global power asymmetries when inspected in detail? How do they include or exclude Indigenous communities? How do digital outputs claiming to be collaborative or participatory consider global inequalities of digital access and literacy? While the digital offers significant possibilities towards achieving interim justice through methods like digital restitution, digitizing can also lead to virtue signalling and neocolonial forms of extraction, exploitation and exoticization.
With this two-day workshop, we invite communities of knowledge producers into conversation, locally in Tübingen and internationally, who are at the cutting edge of fostering digital epistemic justice but who are rarely able to share the same spaces of scholarly discussion: social and cultural anthropology, digital humanities, ethnomusicology, museums, archives, social media content creators, UI/UX design, web development, software architecture and any related fields facing the challenge of reaching audiences often underserved by Humanities and Social Sciences research outputs. Together, we will critically examine practical implications of digital return in collaborative research: Can or should it be a service for, an offer to, or conversation with (non-)academic communities of data providers, co-producers, and reusers, especially in the Global South? What can collaboratively produced digital research outputs achieve beyond buzzwords that merely reproduce academic extractivism? How can they create impact in and beyond digital spaces to assist in actual societal change?
With this Call for Contributions, we aim to move past theoretical reflection. We want to bring together actual practitioners of digital research outputs across all stages of project progression. We invite contributions of upcoming, ongoing and completed projects of all sizes with concrete digital research outputs beyond traditional academic writing geared towards communities of research participants and data (co-)producers by addressing specific digital media habits or challenges of accessibility.
Contributions can touch upon, but are not limited to:
• Digital Archives to Globalize Access
• Artistic Interventions
• Participatory Ethnography
• Multilingualism
• Decolonizing Knowledge Representation
• CARE Principles of Indigenous Data Governance
• Traditional Knowledge Labels
• Collaborative Authorship
• Web / Software Development for austere environments
Modes of submission
Abstract of 300 words. Please describe aims, research questions and methods of your project, how the project is organized, how collaboration or participatory research is understood and practiced in your project, core characteristics of the digital research outputs and how their development relates to the project (required!)
A (working!) hyperlink to your digital research output and your code repository (if applicable). For unpublished, work-in-progress or deprecated digital research outputs, please provide screenshots, screen recordings, concept art, … for a tangible assessment (required!)
Bionote of 100 words (optional, but appreciated)
Deadline: 20 May 2026
Submit via email to: edda.schwarzkopf@uni-tuebingen.de
Larger files can be securely uploaded to this folder:
https://data.mantrams.eu/s/WEys4s5HGPyae4d
Confirmation of Selection: Mid June 2026
Modes of workshop participation
Participation (in person and online) is free of charge. Travel & Accommodation needs to be organized and funded by you, though we will gladly help. Online presentation is possible.
Workshop host and Funding acknowledgement
This workshop is organized and convened by the Digital Humanities Center, the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and the ERC Synergy Grant project MANTRAMS at the University of Tübingen, namely by Edda Schwarzkopf, Prof. Carola Lorea and Dr. Michael Derntl
Publishing in the Archives Profession 