The Department of Humanities and the DTIC are participating in a European project to promote virtual museums
The Department of Humanities and the DTIC are participating in a European project to promote virtual museums
The project, which will be carried out by an international consortium over the next three years, will define how virtual museums can contribute to economic growth and to social progress within the framework of the public role of cultural heritage.
The departments of Humanities and of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) at Pompeu Fabra University will be participating in the European project Virtual Multimodal Museums (ViMM) between October 2016 and May 2019.
It is a project funded by the European Commission through a support and coordination action within the Social Challenges 6 programme of Horizon 2020, which seeks to influence the role that can be played by virtual museums in economic and social progress.
The consortium is made up of seven members (universities, research centres and companies) from seven different European countries, coordinated by Cyprus University of Technology. It has the support of an advisory board consisting of renowned public and private organizations related to the cultural sector.
The goal of the project is to establish some local and international working groups that, taking various specific dimensions of virtual museums into account, and through a powerful online communication platform, define strategies, policies and decision-making processes in relation to the creation and evaluation of virtual museums.
Pompeu Fabra University will occupy the “demand” side based on several case studies (among which is Catalonia): it will explore and define how virtual museums can contribute to economic growth and social development in the context of the public role of cultural heritage.
Laia Pujol (principal investigator of the project) and Georgios Giannoulis (both of the Department of Humanities), together with Narcís Parés, of the DTIC, are the researchers from our University involved, and will receive a grant of 112,500 euros (of a total budget of 1,170,550 euros funded by the EU) to carry to out their part of the project.
The kick-off of the ViMM project took place during the Euromed 2016 Congress, which enjoyed the presence of the various actors involved. This international conference on cultural heritage was held in Nicosia (Cyprus) between 31 October and 5 November 2016, under the title “Digital Heritage. Progress in Cultural Heritage: Documentation, Preservation and Protection”.
A multidisciplinary project of humanistic and technological aspects
Laia Pujol Tost, Marie Curie researcher with the Department of Humanities, will perform the social development part, as well as the general coordination of the project and of the Catalan participants in the different working groups. Within the same Department, Georgios Giannoulis will provide the project management, the economic impact and the coordination of the European participants in the working groups.
And Narcís Parés, member of the Cognitive Media Technologies Group (CMTech) at the DTIC, is responsible for the part of emerging technologies, new conceptual paradigms and the coordination of the technological participants in the working groups.