Global Conditions for Interdisciplinary Digital Humanities

Call for Papers: Edited Open Access Volume Proposal to UCL Press

Proposal Deadline – 9 August 2026

Editors:

• Jin Gao, UCL Department of Information Studies; UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
• María José Afanador Llach, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá
• Adam Crymble, UCL Department of Information Studies; UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

We invite chapter proposals for a new Open Access edited volume, Global Conditions for Interdisciplinary Digital Humanities, currently being developed as a book proposal for UCL Press.

This volume asks: under what conditions does Digital Humanities flourish, and under what conditions does it struggle to take root, survive, or be recognised? Rather than mapping DH by region, method, or tool, the book examines the institutional, linguistic, infrastructural, pedagogical, and political conditions that shape interdisciplinary DH in different parts of the world. 

We are particularly interested in chapters that move beyond description to offer a clear and situated argument. Contributions should analyse what makes a project, curriculum, classroom, network, collaboration, archive, platform, or institution possible, and what this reveals about broader questions of inclusion, recognition, translation, power, and sustainability. 

The volume is committed to multilingual scholarship. We welcome proposals from contributors who wish to write in languages other than English, and we invite contributors to indicate their preferred writing language. Subject to UCL Press approval and available resources, the editors will explore options for translation and, where possible, publishing both original-language and English versions. This multilingual approach aims to create space for local concepts, scholarly traditions, and ways of thinking that may not travel easily into English. As the volume is being prepared as a proposal to UCL Press, this open call will help shape the final table of contents before submission.

Themes and possible directions

The book is structured around four broad and overlapping areas:

1. Physical places
labs, digitisation suites, GLAM workrooms, archives, classrooms, field sites, studios, community spaces, heritage sites, and other material environments in which DH is built, taught, or experienced. This may also include moments when such places are disrupted, reconfigured, closed, relocated, rebuilt, or renewed, and what these changes reveal about the conditions that allow DH to survive or struggle

2. Digital infrastructure
repositories, databases, code forges, platforms, interfaces, hosting environments, standards, metadata systems, social media, and other infrastructures that enable, constrain, or reshape DH practice

3. Linguistic places
translation, multilingualism, language hierarchies, local concepts, interface language, metadata vocabularies, publication practices, and the role of language in structuring DH knowledge

4. Governance places
funders, policy frameworks, scholarly organisations, universities, committees, evaluation systems, hiring, promotion, recognition, and the institutional politics that shape what counts as DH and whose work is sustained 

We welcome proposals grounded in research, teaching, public engagement, cultural heritage practice, community collaboration, software or infrastructure work, or reflective and critical professional experience. Chapters may take the form of research-based case studies, critical reflective essays, quantitative analysis, or theoretically informed practice accounts, but they must all offer a clear and evidence-based argument about the conditions that shape the development, recognition, sustainability, and transformation of Digital Humanities in specific contexts. 

Submission requirements

Please submit the following in one document:

1. Chapter title
2. Author name(s), affiliation(s), and contact email(s)
3. A 200-300 words chapter outline
   Your outline should be rich enough to allow a critical judgement of the proposed chapter. Please include:
   • the main case, material, or context
   • the chapter’s central argument
   • the conceptual, methodological, or critical approach
   • how the chapter connects to the volume’s overall theme
   • the broader significance of the chapter
4. A short biography of 50-100 words for each author
5. Indication of the language in which you would prefer to write the chapter
6. If submitting in a language other than English, please also include a short English summary of 100-150 words where possible, to support editorial review

Important dates

Submission deadline for chapter proposals:
9 August 2026 at 3pm (London time)

Review of proposals and selection of chapters:
August-September 2026

Notification to authors:
September 2026

UCL Press proposal submission:
October 2026

If the proposal is accepted by UCL Press, invited contributors will then be asked to develop their chapters according to the fuller editorial schedule. Final chapters are expected to be around 6,000-8,000 words, including notes but excluding bibliography, unless otherwise agreed with the editors and UCL Press. As the volume will be published at a later stage, contributors should frame their chapters in ways that will remain analytically relevant beyond the immediate present, rather than relying too heavily on short-term developments or time-sensitive description. Current plans indicate full drafts in the original or preferred writing language in late 2027, followed by English versions and editorial review thereafter, subject to the confirmed publication model.

Submission

Please send proposals to: Dr Jin Gao (jin.gao@ucl.ac.uk)

We warmly encourage submissions from scholars, practitioners, and collaborators working across a wide range of disciplinary, institutional, linguistic, and geographic contexts.

Editors Information

Jin Gao is Lecturer in Digital Archives at UCL Department of Information Studies, Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, and Research Fellow at the V&A. Her research and teaching focus on digital cultural heritage, archives, digitisation, metadata, and global Digital Humanities, with particular interests in infrastructure, interdisciplinary practice, and Chinese cultural collections. 

María José Afanador Llach is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities and Director of the Department of Digital Narratives at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Her work connects Digital Humanities pedagogy, historical research, archives, cartographic narratives and critical digital practices in Latin American contexts. 

Adam Crymble is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. His research explores migration, community, and the ways technology creates both challenges and opportunities for humanities research. He is also a long-standing advocate of Global Digital Humanities and has worked for over a decade with the multilingual Programming Historian journals.