Digital Cultural Heritage at the Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School 2023

For the fourth year in a row, and the second one since the pandemic, Lia Costiner and Richard Smith of Oxford’s X-Reality Hub, in collaboration with Matthew Nicholls of Jesus College, Oxford, offered the course Digital Cultural Heritage at the Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School. This week-long training, held in Oxford on 3-7 July 2023, introduced participants to methods for capturing, analysing, and digitally displaying cultural heritage. This included the digital capture of objects and the creation of 3D models using photogrammetry, the reconstruction of the past using SketchUp, as well as the creation of smartphone applications and virtual reality environments using the programme Unity.

This year, the Digital Cultural Heritage strand trained 14 students who came to Oxford from 11 countries in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia.. Backgrounds of participants were diverse, ranging from professionals, to university support staff, digital specialists, to graduate students (PhDs, and Masters). The group was also balaned in terms of age, some being at the start, other mid-career, and a few seasoned professionals.

The Digital Cultural Heritage training served to disseminate knowledge from academia to other sectors. As importantly, the course created new connections and opportunities for future collaboration. We hope that the friendships and networks that were created over these five days will continue to grow and develop for years to come.

For more information about this training, read our report here