Date: 12-14 November 2025
Venue: State Archives of Venice, Italy
Participation: free of charge, registration kindly requested here
Languages: English and Italian
We are delighted to announce that the 35th ICARUS Convention will take place at the State Archives of Venice (Archivio di Stato di Venezia) from 12 to 14 November 2025. The venue, located in the very heart of the historic city at Campo dei Frari 3002, provides a fitting backdrop for the theme “Bridging Centuries: Digital Pathways for Medieval Charters and Beyond”.
This year’s convention will focus on the challenges and opportunities of digitising medieval charters, with particular attention to developing solutions for machine-readable and machine-understandable access. Beyond this, the programme will also embrace a broader spectrum of digitisation practices, showcasing technologies, workflows, and innovative applications that support the study, preservation, and accessibility of archival heritage.
Venice itself – historic crossroads of cultures – embodies the very idea of bridging past and present, and will serve as the perfect setting for fostering dialogue between archivists, researchers, students, citizen archivists, and experts from around the world.
Conference Programme:
The Convention’s topic “Bridging Centuries: Digital Pathways for Medieval Charters and Beyond” will be tackled from different angles, the programme offering a rich variety of sessions aimed at exploring the intersection of archives, digital humanities, diplomatics, AI-tools and new user-services.
Highlights include:
- The opening day with the first sessions under the topic “Bridging Centuries”, including the keynote given by Prof. Dr. Dominique Stutzmann (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes CNRS)
- Sessions on AI for Archives – New Tools, New Perspectives; going Beyond Traditional Archives: Rethinking Description and Digitizing Heritage: Methods and Challenges.
- Parallel sessions dedicated to the latest news in connection with Monasterium Next Generation, presented by the team of the project DiDip – From Digital to Distant Diplomatics
- Opportunity for our Italian colleagues to dive deep into our platforms Monasterium and Matricula (M&M) within a separate workshop on Thursday
- A full day exploring descriptive practices in archival work on Friday under the topic: “Describing, Enhancing, and Serving Users”.
- A special guided tour of the State Archives of Venice, offering a unique chance to see the institution’s holdings and infrastructure in person.
- Plenty of networking opportunities, including an evening reception at the Archive’s premises and our traditional soccer match.
Join us in Venice for a conference that brings together archival professionals, digital humanists, technologists and institution-leaders to share ideas, tools and methods for the preservation, description and dissemination of archival heritage. The venue of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia enhances the experience: historic setting, rich provenance-materials, and the vibrant cultural backdrop of Venice.
We look forward to welcoming you to Venice – to learn, share and build future-oriented archival practices together.
Note: all sessions in the main conference room will be live streamed, so if you cannot attend in person, at least you can follow online.
Registration is open until 5 November 2025.