Digital Art Histories Research Group #DAHRG

This cluster seeks to develop and support innovative research and practice around ‘the digital’ in art and architectural history, conservation and heritage, and curating at The Courtauld. We are particularly interested in art history’s growing entanglement with emerging technologies in ways that inflect our practice and discipline. 

#DAHRG’s intentional juxtaposition of digital media and methods across fields of research is intended to reframe and complicate our understanding of the digital. We envision this intersectional approach as a strategic investment in exploring the ever-growing influence of the digital on art and its scholarship, and as a means of bringing together researchers across the Courtauld and partner institutions, including those often situated at extremes of art historical periodisation, approach, and geography.

The cluster aims are framed by the following questions:

How are computational methods and digital tools expanding the fields of art and architectural history and cultural heritage? What new questions are being explored through emerging technologies? How can we revise disciplinary bounds by treating the digital as both medium and method?

How do these methods and tools cast the received practice of art history in new light, offering different perspectives on our sources, modes of analysis, and narratives of the past? Can the digital help us redress disciplinary biases and blind spots to offer models of a more inclusive art history?

How does the study of digital art, including time- and process-based work, games, and experimental media, help inform broader art historical methods and methodologies?

How are digital media offering new avenues for communication of research, including in museums, galleries, and heritage sites, scholarly publications, and the public humanities?

What areas of common ground does the digital offer for transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration across the core subjects of research at The Courtauld?

The cluster aims to support expansion of the Courtauld’s capacity in these areas and its broader familiarity with them, such that digital art and art history become more integrated into the Institute’s understanding and presentation of the discipline; to feed into research-led teaching of digital art and art history at all levels, from BA through PhD, as well through professional development for colleagues; and to facilitate collaborative networks within and beyond the Courtauld in support of these goals.