Rescuing endangered archives through digitization.

Inspired by UNESCO’s mission to protect cultural heritage in danger of destruction, this research cluster in Digital Cultural Heritage will harness expertise across multiple disciplines and schools at Vanderbilt to develop new digital methods for identifying, studying, and preserving historic cultural expressions. Because human cultures are highly varied, this research agenda is well suited to a broad trans-institutional approach which joins expertise in humanistic research across variety of cultural expressions (archeological sites, artifacts and monuments, texts, music) with emergent digital technologies for the creation and manipulation of 3D models, immersive digital environments, and complex databases and data formats capable of modeling the heterogeneous and complex forms of humanistic data. Faculty members at Vanderbilt are already internationally recognized for individual research in these areas; this research cluster brings them together to develop trans-institutional resources to support digital research and next-generation undergraduate and graduate education on cultural heritage.