The web of digitized collections and archives in the field of arts and culture is expanding rapidly. As with any technological burst, the digital imperative evokes promises for an improved functionality, but also brings about new challenges and perils. Many museums, like other memory institutions, embrace the digitalization of their archives and collections as means to attract new audiences, for instance, and further their participation and engagement in their collections, their program of activities, and their research. At the same time, these digital transformations challenge existing modes of knowledge production and dissemination, requiring new competencies and new forms of collaboration.

This issue of Stedelijk Studies investigates how we imagine those transformations, and how they affect cultural and academic practices. We invite manuscripts that critically investigate how practices of digitization of collections and archives transform knowledge production and knowledge exchange across academia, museums, and archives. This question ties in with recent scholarship in the fields of digital heritage, digital art history, and digital humanities, but is also addressed in other fields, such as science and technology studies (STS), artistic practices, and design theory.

>> Read the call for papers