Best,

Emmanuela Carbé

Call for Papers: Editopia. On the Future of Documentology and Scholarly Editing in the Post-Digital Age

Conference of the Institute for Documentology and Scholarly Editing (IDE), University of Wuppertal, Germany; 2-4 September 2026. Local organization: Digital Humanities Team (DH@BUW), supported by Interdisciplinary Center for Editing and Document Studies (IZED).

What comes after the digital edition?

Digital editions have become an everyday scholarly practice. The critical representation of historical documents is now routinely digital, networked, openly accessible, and simultaneously available in multiple forms of representation. As the analogue–digital debate has largely come to an end, new questions come to the fore. We no longer ask whether digital methods are epistemically justified and viable, but how and to what end they are best used. Alongside persistent or newly emerging technical challenges, other challenges gain prominence in this shift. By way of example: What constitutes “the text” in the post-digital age, where principles of stability and processuality, material transmission and processual data streams, and authority and democratization coexist? How do source criticism and textual criticism and their processes of knowledge generation change under the influence of generative AI when machines act as “first readers” transcribing, interpreting, and annotating documents? Moving beyond its incunabula phase, how will the affordances of digital media  shape concepts of publications? Are we moving towards an era of media presentation as a (as we used to say) mash-up or (as it is called now) transclusion of ubiquitously reusable building blocks? What responsibility do editions bear for the authenticity and trustworthiness of the edited material? How can editions be made more open, accessible, and future-proof? Does the edition as a form still persist under these conditions, or does it dissolve? And how might we need to rethink the models and processes that lead to data in the first place?

One fundamental observation underlies all these questions: data constitute the content and core of the edition, and data themselves are primarily fluid, processual and networked.

On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the Institute for Documentology and Scholarly Editing (IDE) invites scholars to engage with these questions at the international conference Editopia. By post-digital we understand a condition in which digital tools and modes of thinking are no longer conceived primarily in opposition to the analogue, but as the foundation of humanities scholarship and, consequently, as the basis for further-reaching questions.

We therefore invite contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following thematic areas:

The Post-Digital Document. What does materiality mean in the digital realm, from file formats and storage media to infrastructures? Which documentological properties characterize digitized or born-digital sources such as emails, websites, or social media? How do we address versioning, ephemerality, and the processual nature of digital artefacts? What challenges arise from multimodal documents combining text, image, audio, video, and interactive elements?

Identity and Coherence of the Edition. What constitutes an edition when its components are fluid and networked, or when externally created digital objects are integrated and reused? What roles do authorship, boundaries, closure, and authority play when editions become permanently updatable? What might establish coherence under such conditions, and is coherence still a relevant claim at all?

Scholarly Editing and Artificial Intelligence. How do machine-based methods transform editorial practice, from automated transcription to annotation and contextualization? Where do they expand possibilities, and where do new dependencies emerge? Which new objectives arise, and which traditional aims may fade from view? How should we deal with machine-generated uncertainty and opacity? What does it mean when AI-generated texts themselves become objects of editing? How can the influence of AI on the emergence and formation of an edition be documented and critically reflected?

Source Criticism, Forensics, and Authentication. How does source criticism change when documents are created digitally, migrated between media states or data models, and are inherently manipulable? Which methods of provenance research and authentication become necessary? How can trust in digital editions be established, and what responsibilities do editors bear with regard to transparency, traceability, and credibility?

Transmedial Representation and Aesthetics. How does the edition change between print, screen, and other conceivable digital media? What design possibilities do interactive or immersive formats offer? How does the visual and sensory dimension of digital editions affect not only their use but also the scholarly process of knowledge production?

Labour, Economy, and Institutions. How can editorial projects be organized between project-based logic and long-term sustainability? Do editions require new business models, and if so, which are compatible with open access and scholarly independence? How do roles and professional profiles change as editions become more collaborative, technical, and data-intensive? How can the entire process of producing an edition be fully documented? Under what conditions is good editorial work possible today?

Community, Accessibility, and Knowledge Transfer. Who has access to digital editions, and who remains excluded? What do communities such as the TEI community contribute to editorial practice, and where are their limits? How can collaborative modes of work and open infrastructures be designed? How can scholarly editing be taught when digital competencies are assumed, and when documentological foundations as well as other technical skills must be newly conveyed?

Power, Participation, and Responsibility in Editing. How does community-based knowledge production relate to academic gatekeeping models? How can open workflows democratize editorial decision-making? What may and what should be edited—what ethics of visibility are required? Who edits whom, with what authority—and which new perspectives, for example, gender-sensitive or decolonial approaches, open up alternative paths? What responsibilities do editors bear toward marginalized voices and sensitive content? How is the role of the editor changing?

Theoretical Foundations. What is a “text” in the post-digital age? How can the concept of the document be redefined between stability and fluidity? What epistemic function does the edition fulfil—what do we produce, what do we represent? How can post-structuralist, neo-materialist, or other theoretical approaches renew scholarly editing? Which concepts of authorship, work, transmission, and document remain viable?

These thematic areas are intended as points of orientation. We also welcome proposals that introduce additional perspectives.

We invite submissions for 20-minute papers. Abstracts should comprise 2,000–4,000 characters (including spaces and references) and clearly outline the research question, methodological approach, and expected results. Please also include a short biographical note.

The submission deadline is 22. March 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of April 2026. Selected contributions are planned for publication in the SIDE book series. The conference languages are English and German. Participation is limited to 60 participants. No conference fee will be charged.

Please send abstracts and inquiries to editopia2026@i-d-e.de. Conference page: https://editopia2026.i-d-e.de