Audio, visual, and audiovisual materials are crucial for understanding the contemporary world and our pasts. Audiovisual materials are significant carriers of communication both nationally and transnationally, and thus their digital analysis is essential for assessing major cultural, artistic, social, and political trends. As inherently multimodal, they present analytical challenges, and their digital study has lagged behind—especially when compared with digital humanities research on text and textual sources. Additionally, copyright questions restricting the access to data increase the need to collaborate within the field (Arnold et al. 2021; Hagener and Roig-Sanz 2024). At the same time, the rapid emergence of multimodal generative LLMs raises pressing methodological, practical, ethical, and ecological questions (Smits and Wevers 2023; Karjus 2025; Tong et al. 2024; Europeana PRO 2025). From the perspective of the wider Digital Humanities, joint elaboration of methods in digital analysis of audiovisual materials may pave the way towards a deeper understanding of multimodality, as pointed out by Hagener and Roig-Sanz (Hagener and Roig-Sanz 2024). Addressing the issues of audiovisual materials within Digital Humanities is thus needed. As this requires bringing views and expertise from different disciplines and backgrounds together, strengthening the networks of scholars working in this field has become more timely and vital than before.

Year 2026 marks the 10th iteration of the AudioVisual & DH Special Interest Group (AVinDH SIG) events. Established in 2014, the SIG has now reached the point, where it is timely to reflect on the developments in the field for the past decade, and to and to jointly plan for the future of our community to be able to even better meet the challenges. A day-long mini-conference, instead of a half-day event, is thus a prerequisite for giving space for this crucial joint reflection.

Inspired by the conference theme “Engagement,” the AVinDH SIG mini-conference focuses on consolidating the network and engaging with new members. AVinDH SIG invites participants at different career stages who share an active interest in audiovisual culture to join our workshop, network, and share their ideas about the current state and future directions of research on audiovisual materials in the digital humanities.

The organising team of the mini-conference comprises of experts in digital media, art and architecture history, creative computing, cultural history, 20th and 21st century literature, hispanic studies, and digital humanities with reserach foci ranging from comics, animation film, and game studies, theatre and performances, historical newsreels, sustainability practices in humanities computing, and algorithmic production and analysis of visual culture.

The event format follows loosely the ideas on informality, openness and participatory engagement of a THATCamp in its aim to further strengthen the community and steer joint discussion about the future trajectories. The program of the "AVinDH: Past, Present, the Future" SIG mini-conference is constructed in a manner that will shed light to the past, foster joint discussion on the future developments, strengthen networks among researchers in the field and allow sharing information about the latest research and tools available. We incorporate dedicated slots for a panel discussion, speed-dating, lightning talks, tool cavalcade, and a joint lunch break.

The panel discussion revisits the original aims of the SIG and opens a space for collective reflection on the pressing issues that the community should address moving forward. The moderator of the panel is Alison Langmead (University of Pittsburgh, USA). The panel includes at least Lauren Tilton (University of Richmond, USA) and Michaël Bourgatte (Université de Lorraine, France). We are currently looking for a third panellist from East Asia, to cater to geographical balance. The panellists represent different disciplines and approaches to the past, present, and future of AVinDH research.

The speed-dating session is a structured networking activity designed to ensure that participants can also meet those they do not already know. Pairings will be arranged to mix disciplinary backgrounds and levels of seniority. The limited time for each “date” encourages participants to introduce themselves, describe their research, and articulate their key interests quickly, enabling each attendee to meet approximately three new colleagues during the event.

The lightning talk sessions offer community members an opportunity to present their work briefly or raise questions of interest. These five-minute presentations will provide insight into the diversity of current research and may highlight emerging themes in the field. Learning about one another’s work also fosters further networking within the community. The mini-conference can host 15-20 lightning talks, accepted in the order of registration.

The tool cavalcade revisits the online tool workshops held both prior to the mini-conference and previews those planned for the future. This session gives tool developers an opportunity to showcase their programs and gather in-person feedback from the community of potential users. For the participants, the tool cavalcade offers an opportunity to become familiar with a range of tools, out of which they can choose where to focus on later if they wish. This way of presenting the tools also makes it easier for the online participants' to get the necessary information.

The mini-conference will be held in a hybrid format to enable engagement with SIG activities for participants both on-site and online. The organisers will stream on-site sessions via Zoom and facilitate communication between participants across both modes of attendance. Technical requirements of the mini-conference are the following: projector for slide presentations, sound system, camera and microphone for online streaming, wi-fi access.

Schedule

10:00 – 10:30 Welcoming words & introducing AVinDH, Mila Oiva and Justin Wigard

10:30 – 11:30 Panel discussion ”AVinDH SIG 10 iterations! Past, present and the future”; discussants: Lauren Tilton, Michaël Bourgatte, N.N.; Moderator & discussant: Alison Langmead

11:30 – 12:30 Speed-dating – a structured networking activity leading the participants to get to know new people

12:30 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 16:00 Lightning talks, 5 minutes each

16:00 – 16:15 Break

16:15 – 17:15 Tool cavalcade – short presentations on tools that have been presented in the online workshops earlier, a possibility to give feedback and ask questions

17:15 – 17:45 Final words