Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage: Projecting our Past to the Future

The “Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage: Projecting our Past to the Future” with acronym ITN-DCH, is the first and one of the largest Marie Curie fellowship projects in the area of the e-documentation / e-preservation and CH protection funded by the European Union under the FP7 PEOPLE research framework.

The Project started on the 1st of October 2013 and its consortium comprising of 14 full partners and 10 associate members covering the entire spectrum of European CH actors, ranging from academia, research institutions, industry, museums, archives and libraries. The project aims to train 20 fellows (16 ESR’s and 4 ER’s – 500 person months) in the area of CH digital documentation, preservation and protection in order to create them a strong academic profile and market oriented skills which will significantly contribute to their career prospects.

The consortium and the fellows training programme is supported by a prestigious advisory board (see below). The project duration is 4 years and is coordinated by the Digital Heritage Research Lab of the Cyprus University of Technology. The total research funding is 3.71 MEuro. ITN-DCH aims -for the first time worldwide- to analyze, design, research, develop and validate an innovative multi-disciplinary and inter-sectorial research training framework that covers the entire lifecycle of digital CH research for a cost–effective preservation, documentation, protection and presentation of cultural heritage.

CH is an integral element of Europe and vital for the creation of a common European identity and one of the greatest assets for steering Europe’s social, economic development and job creation. However, the current research training activities in CH are fragmented and mostly design to be of a single-discipline, failing to cover the whole lifecycle of Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) research, which is by nature a multi-disciplinary and inter-sectorial research agenda.  

ITN-DCH targets all aspects of CH ranging from tangible (books, newspapers, images, drawings, manuscripts, uniforms, maps, artefacts, archaeological sites, monuments) to intangible content (e.g., music, performing arts, folklore, theatrical performances) and their inter-relationships.

The project aims HTML Source Editor to boost the added value of CH assets by re-using them in real application environments (protection of CH, education, tourism industry, advertising, fashion, films, music, publishing, video games and TV) through research on

1. new personalized, interactive, mixed and augmented reality enabled e-services,
2. new recommendations in data acquisition,
3. new forms of representations (3D/4D) of both tangible /intangible assets and
4. interoperable metadata forms that allow easy data exchange and archiving.