Linked Pasts VII, Ghent and Online, December 13–21, 2021

The annual Linked Pasts conference, which has previously been held at KCL, Madrid, Stanford, Mainz, Bordeaux and virtually at London brings together scholars, heritage professionals and other practitioners with an interest in Linked Open Data as applied to the study of the ancient and historical worlds. Panels and working groups at Linked Pasts are more goal-oriented than a conventional academic conference, and activities and agendas are often proposed, developed and revised by all participants at the event itself.

The seventh installment of Linked Pasts in December 2021 will be hosted by the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities and CLARIAH Flanders Open Humanities Service Infrastructure consortium (an interdisciplinary team from Universities of Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Brussels).

Linked Pasts 7 will be a hybrid event, with activities taking place remotely over a week (December 13-17)  and two days of in-person sessions in Ghent (December 20 and 21). Other than welcome, keynotes and wrap-up at the beginning and end of the conference, most activities during the remote week will be asynchronous, with work or discussions taking place in whatever medium is most appropriate to the activity and community in question. Participation in the conference is free, but advance registration is required.

There will be space for suggestion and selection of activities at the conference, but we also welcome proposals for research activities, which may include (but are not restricted to): development of standards, ontologies and research applications; discovery and integration of datasets; enrichment and annotation of textual collections; collaboration, pedagogy and community expansion; other relevant undertakings with a focus on Linked Open Data and the historical world.

In the absence of individual presentations and lectures, posters are a great way to share a project, dataset, method or activity related to the LOD and historical or heritage research, and discuss your work in a less formal setting with other interested attendees. We will hold an online digital poster session available throughout the symposium.