Call for Papers:

Futuring Digital Cultural Heritage
A theme track at the Design Research Society Conference 2026 (DRS2026)
June 8-12, 2026
Scotland, United Kingdom
https://drs2026.thedrs.org/6-2-futuring-digital-cultural-heritage
https://drs2026.thedrs.org/home

Deadlines for submissions:
Abstracts: October 31, 2025
Full papers: November 14, 2025

We’re excited to share that the theme track Futuring Digital Cultural Heritage has been selected for the Design Research Society Conference 2026 (DRS2026), one of the world’s leading international forums for design research.

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

DEADLINES

Key dates for submissions:

• Abstract by Friday 31st October 2025
• Full paper by Friday 14th November 2025

Submit abstract/article here:
https://www.conftool.pro/drs2026/index.php?page=submissions

It was exciting to be selected, and we look forward to welcoming inspiring contributions in Edinburgh!

Best wishes
Marco & the chair team

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