Research

Ongoing projects

• EU Horizon Europe DIGICHer

  Project duration: 3 years (2024–2027)

  Budget: €3.8 million (total amount)

  Funding body: EU HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01-03, grant agreement no.: 101132481

  Cultural heritage (CH) digitisation has created great opportunities to preserve, maintain, and promote cultural heritage. Yet it also raises challenges in terms of representation and content exhibition. This becomes particularly pressing in the context of the cultural heritage of minorities. Overall, this reduces the participation and inclusion of minorities, hinders equitable representations of diverse values in digitisation, and leads to increased risks of misuse of digital cultural heritage.

  DIGICHer tackles these challenges by providing new insights into the key legal and policy, socio-economic, and technological factors governing the digitisation of minorities’ cultural heritage. Following a citizen science and co-creation approach, DIGICHer develops a novel, scalable framework and methods to promote equitable, diverse, and inclusive practices. These are verified via user-centric approaches through pilots with three minority groups in the EU: the Sámi, Jewish, and Ladin people, with further exploitation among other minority groups.

  On this basis, DIGICHer develops recommendations for policymakers and decision-makers, as well as cultural heritage institutions, and delivers methods for decision support to monitor the field of digital heritage with specific regard to its long-term diversity.

  The DIGICHer interdisciplinary consortium will lead to several actions and outcomes that will increase minorities’ involvement in the digitisation and use of their cultural heritage. This will contribute to a more responsive and democratic cultural sector whose digital activities reflect the plurality of minorities’ worldviews in Europe.

  Minority heritage will be represented in a way that respects minorities’ values, ensuring better understanding of and enhanced engagement with minority heritage collections by the general public and professional heritage users. This will lead to more resilient European cultural institutions with a pluralistic offer that appeals to a diverse future generation of audiences.

  Link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101132481External link

  Project website: https://www.digicher-project.eu/External link

• EU Horizon Europe Meta-Museum

  Project duration: 3 years (2024–2027)

  Budget: €2.9 million (total amount)

  Funding body: EU HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01-04, grant agreement no.: 101132488

  Link: https://meta-museum-project.eu/External link

• EU Horizon Europe INDUX-R

  It is somewhat ironic that Joseph von Fraunhofer’s seminal work on optics laid the foundations for XR over two centuries ago and was kept as a state secret, while today all major industrial XR players are non-European. Despite the solid scientific base of European organizations and companies in XR and related fields, the European XR industry has seen limited success, mainly due to heavy market fragmentation, a lack of investment, and difficulties in commercializing applied research.

  Acknowledging this, INDUX-R envisions a human-centric XR ecosystem that will transform European industrial sectors by empowering people and creating innovative XR products and services with significant added value. It targets concrete scientific breakthroughs integrated into technological enablers that will be applied in use cases driven by real-life needs, while also having the potential to be replicated in several other applications. These breakthroughs focus on core XR technologies, namely the digitisation and creation of XR assets, realistic animation, light-field HMDs, XR media streaming, and egocentric perception.

  To address the challenges posed by multi-user XR applications, INDUX-R will implement a highly scalable, zero-touch 5G architecture and a secure, interoperable IoT network that can accommodate fluctuating demands and minimize the waste of resources.

  The planned use cases cover a wide spectrum of industrial ecosystems, including event planning, Industry 4.0, virtual medical training, cultural tourism, and the broadcasting of sports events. End users will participate in every step of INDUX-R, from the elaboration of user requirements to the final qualification of the ecosystem, thereby implementing a human-centric approach to XR technology development.

  In this regard, INDUX-R reflects on the societal and ethical challenges posed by XR, building a legal and ethical framework that will ensure technological development is aligned with European values.

  Project duration: 3 years (2024–2027)

  Budget: €7.9 million (total amount)

  Funding body: HORIZON-CL4-2023-HUMAN-01-22, grant agreement no.: 101135556

  Link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101135556External link

  Project website: https://www.gw.uni-jena.de/fakultaet/juniorprofessur-fuer-digital-humanities-bild-objekt/forschung/indux-rExternal link

• EU Horizon Europe INFINITY

  INFINITY is a pioneering Research and Innovation Action (RIA) funded under the European Union’s prestigious Horizon Europe Programme. Our work is dedicated to overcoming the challenges of semantic fragmentation and ethical ambiguity that affect vast digital collections of Cultural Heritage Digital Objects (CHDOs) across Europe.

  Our ultimate goal is to actively support the political and technological advancement of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), positioning our outputs directly within the emerging Data Space for Cultural Heritage.

  Project duration: 3.5 years (2026–2029)

  Budget: €6 million (total amount)

  WebsiteExternal link

• EU Digital Europe 3DBigDataSpace

  Project duration: 1.5 years (2025–2026)

  Budget: €2.0 million (total amount)

  Funding body: DIGITAL-2023-CLOUD-DATA-AI-05, grant agreement no.: 101173385

  Link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101173385External link

• EU i3 Metaheritage

  Project duration: 2 years (2025–2026)

  Budget: €1.5 million (total amount)

  Funding body: European Commission i3-CAPACITY, grant agreement no.: 101180388

• DFG-3D-Viewer - Infrastructure for digital 3D reconstructions

  While web-based GIS functionalities for processing and visualizing 2D geometries can be realized with standardized services and formats, corresponding techniques for managing and analyzing 3D data have not yet been established. Similarly, previous web-based 3D viewers such as sketchfab.com or 3dwarehouse.sketchup.com are commercial offerings and offer neither legal security nor verified long-term data availability or scientific traceability. There is a lack of widely accepted minimum standards for the documentation of 3D models and licensing.

  The development of a digital 3D viewer infrastructure for historical 3D reconstructions is intended as a permanent infrastructure for the first time, offering long-term accessibility and archieval of raw data sets and meta-information. It also enables collaboration and expert discourse on the virtual model through the generation of 3D web models derived from common data types.

  The overarching goal of the project is the development of a digital 3D viewer for digital, source-based 3D reconstructions. Subgoals are:

  • Creation of an interdisciplinary application profile
  • Workflow for the delivery of a 3D model in the repository
  • 3D presentation in the DFG viewer
  • Establishment of a 3D repository
  • Rights concept
  • Dissemination

  Project duration: 01.01.2021 – 31.12.2022

  Funding amount: ca. 415.000 EUR, davon FSU Jena: ca. 258.000 EUR

  Project partgicipants: Konsortialpartner: SLUB Dresden, HS Mainz

  Funding source: DFG-LIS, Funding number: MU 4040/5-1

  Zur ProjektwebseiteExternal link

• DFG NFDI4Memory

  The NFDI4Memory consortium brings together research institutions, memory institutions, and information infrastructures from the historically oriented humanities. As part of the community, the applicants and participating institutions pursue shared interests and goals regarding the requirements for research data management (RDM) in disciplines that rely on historical methods or data. A central concern is the further development of the specific tradition of source criticism for the digital age.

  The Junior Professorship is part of the institutional co-application by the University of Jena.

  Link: https://4memory.de/External link

• BMBF Nucleus Jena

  Nucleus Jena is a joint initiative of Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena and Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The project pursues the overarching goal of making research-based idea, knowledge, and technology transfer more efficient as a key prerequisite for successful and results-oriented innovation processes in Jena and the East Thuringia region. In doing so, it actively contributes to addressing economic, ecological, and social challenges of the future as well as current transformation processes.

  The professorship is responsible for subproject 10.

  Project duration: 5 years

  Budget: €9 million (total amount)

  Funding body: BMBF, grant agreement no.: 03IHS234A

  Weblink: https://www.nucleus-jena.de/External link

• DBU Digital Environmental Education

  Environmental education is an important area of development in school education and, against the backdrop of climate change, an essential educational goal. According to a UNESCO survey, a majority of young people in Europe lack a comprehensive understanding of climate change, which underlines the need for better education. Extracurricular learning environments such as student laboratories are particularly well suited to sustainable knowledge transfer due to their enactive and authentic settings.

  While student laboratories have so far primarily been located in the STEM field, humanities-based student laboratories offer the opportunity to raise awareness of climate change among children and young people who are less interested in the natural sciences, thereby responding to the UN’s call for interdisciplinary and multiperspectival climate change education. By combining this with digital topics that are of interest to a broad range of students, such as social media posts, blogging and vlogging, or media design, there is an opportunity to achieve sustainable learning outcomes.

  Building on already established laboratory structures, the Teaching and Learning Lab: Digital Environmental Education aims to develop and establish research-oriented, digitally supported teaching formats in the field of extracurricular environmental education from the perspective of the humanities and historical studies. This gives children and young people the opportunity to engage interactively and from multiple perspectives with topics such as climate protection and sustainability.

  The Teaching and Learning Lab is: (1) a format for teaching offerings by students for school pupils; (2) a setting in which students are qualified in a seminar and then apply the skills they have acquired by providing digital teaching offerings for school pupils; and (3) a learning environment in which these teaching offerings for school pupils take place either in schools and educational institutions or in the laboratory rooms at the university.

  By combining cultural-historical topics, digital methods, and innovative teaching formats, the DH Eco Lab tests educational offerings that open up interests and topics beyond the natural sciences. For example, students develop tasks for school pupils such as: (a) researching and documenting damage patterns on buildings in the urban environment as a web presentation; (b) conducting interviews on the development of urban landscapes in times of climate change; and (c) creating a digital knowledge resource by children for children on environmental factors.

  As a result, climate and environmental education is provided for three target groups: (1) the participating school pupils are sustainably sensitized and informed through enactive engagement with the topic; (2) the participating student teachers receive directly reusable concepts and self-tested teaching materials, enabling them to include these topics in future teaching activities as well; and (3) the digital knowledge resources created and the published teaching concepts are also accessible to other teachers and users.

  The lab is a central component of the professorship and is intended to continue after the end of the project for the training of student multipliers and the continuation of the courses. In addition, the course offerings and course results developed will be made permanently available via OER and cultural heritage platforms.

Completed projects

• BMBF THInKI - Thuringian Higher Education Initiative for AI in Studies
• DFG NFDI4Culture - 4D Community Browser
• DFG NFDI4Memory - 4Memory@School
• EU CE C4Education
• EU DEP 5DCulture
• Learning how to Teach Cultural Mediation through Digital-Music
• Learning by Watching 2021: Teaching and Learning with video formats in digital semesters - virtual conference

  The virtual conference Learning by Watching (part of the Digital4Humanities project) was held in September 2021. This conference served to collect video formats in teaching for learners of the past digital semesters from a broad range of subject cultures and to make them visible and discussable.

  Funding source: Graduate Academy FSU Jena

  Zur Konferenzwebsite de

• Time Machine Project Center Jena

  The project center supports the European Time Machine project. It is funded by the Thuringian Ministry of Science via TAB and includes the operation of the German contact point as well as the creation of three feasibility studies:

  • Automated NLP/AI-based trend scouting tools for monitoring scientific articles and publications
  • A highly automated modeling pipeline for browser-based mobile 4D city visualizations
  • Multimodal analysis of user requirements for 4D visualizations.

  Project duration: 1. June 2020 - 30. November 2020

  Funding amount: ca. 65.000 EUR

  Funding source: Thüringische Aufbaubank, Funding number: 220FGI0045

• Modellathon 2020 – Wettbewerb zur 3D-Rekonstruktion von Kulturerbe

  The three-dimensional representation of historical objects and architecture is an important field in the Digital Humanities and has great potential both for science communication and for the communication of history in the context of public history. In the course of a modelathon, a competition for the 3D reconstruction of cultural heritage, students will digitally 3D model architectural cultural heritage on the basis of historical sources using CAD programs during the winter semester 2020/2021. The results in the form of 3D models, films or image series as well as accompanying texts with background information on the respective project will be presented to the public via a weblog accompanying the project and the best works will subsequently be awarded by an expert jury with cash and non-cash prizes with a total value of 1,000.00 euros.

  Project duration: 01.10.2020 – 28.02.2021

  Funding amount: ca. 10.000 EUR

  Funding source: Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK), Funding code: 220-440SI-06

  Competition blog: https://modellathon.hypotheses.org/External link

  Funding program: https://www.hrk.de/themen/hochschulsystem/kleine-faecher/kleine-faecher-sichtbar-innovativ/gefoerderte-projekte/External link

• EU Study VIGIE 2020/654 on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible Cultural Heritage

  The EU study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritageExternal link carried out by a consortium led by the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). The main objective of the study is to map parameters, formats, standards, benchmarks, methodologies, and guidelines, relating to the 3D digitisation of immovable and movable tangible cultural heritage assets, considering the different potential purposes or uses, and general-purpose visualisation, by degree of complexity. If you want more information have a look at our brochureExternal link and watch the video of the “2nd EU Workshop on how digital technologies can contribute to the preservation and restoration of Europe's most important and endangered Cultural Heritage sitesExternal link”.

  Project duration: October 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021

  Project participants: Konsortialleiter: Cyprus University of Technology; Konsortialpartner: TIme Machine, ICOMOS, NTUA, Politechnico di Milano, Arctron 3D, Zoller + Fröhlich GmbH, Historic Environment Scotland, Aristoteles-Universität Thessaloniki

  Fördergeber: EU, Funding code: VIGIE 2020/654

• DFG Scientific Network: Digital 3D Reconstructions as Tools for Architectural History Research

  Learn more
• MBF HistKI – Investigation, Modeling, and Multimodal AI-Based Support of Image Source Research and Criticism as a Complex and Fundamental Working Technique in Historical Scholarship

  Learn more
• BMBF Digital4Humanities – Modular Self-Learning Materials for Teaching Digital Research Methods in Existing Humanities Courses

  Digital teaching formats, such as video tutorials with self-learning materials, have so far been used primarily for technical degree programmes. The Digital4Humanities project therefore focused on the development of digital teaching offerings specifically tailored to the requirements of the humanities. To this end, a subject-specific concept was developed, tested, and evaluated using video tutorials, with the aim of teaching students digital skills for working on assignments in the humanities.

  This was implemented by way of example for teaching content in the subjects of art history and German studies, while taking into account transferability to other humanities contexts. The project aimed to promote students’ digital literacy in order to improve career prospects for humanities scholars in the course of digitalisation.

  Project duration: 1 January 2020 – 31 December 2022

  Funding amount: approx. €520,000

  Funding body: BMBF, grant agreement no.: 16DHB3006

  Funding programme: https://wihofo.bmbfcluster.de/de/digital4humanities-3040.phpExternal link

  Project website

• DBU Denkmalschutz4D – Digital Urban-Spatial Communication of Anthropogenic Influencing Factors and Protective Measures for Built Cultural Heritage

  In contrast to established approaches such as 3D representations, 4D aims at the 3D representation of temporal developments, thereby making cultural and architectural heritage changes visually tangible. Against this background, it enables buildings, landscapes, and related temporal processes to be made immediately and intuitively imaginable.

  Against this background, the project aims to make the diversity and transformation processes of architectural monuments in the urban context virtually visible and experienceable, especially for children and young people, but also for residents and tourists. A cultural-historical interest in information, in the sense of a “virtual city tour” and a “visual history book,” is to be combined with the communication of knowledge about monuments as well as anthropogenic influencing factors and protective measures.

  The core target group of the project is young people around the age of 12, with a later expansion to other target groups being possible. The project approach is based on the development of a technological pipeline for the highly automated creation of 4D city models using image sources. This enables browser-based 4D model creation and visualization on mobile devices, which is in turn enriched with informational content on anthropogenic influencing factors. This content was created as part of courses by students as well as by initiatives on urban history. This information offering addresses tourists and residents as recipients.

  With the above-mentioned focal points, the proposed project offers several approaches that are unique both technologically and in terms of content and didactics.

  Project duration: 1 July 2020 – 31 December 2021

  Funding amount: approx. €170,000

  Funding body: Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, grant agreement no.: 35654

• Jena4D – A Participatory Virtual City History Book

  In 2024, the project expanded an existing browser application for mobile devices into a participatory knowledge platform for the 4D representation of the entire city centre of Jena. Citizens can contribute historical photographs, anecdotes, and stories, as well as create digital city tours. In doing so, they collaboratively create a public digital 4D history book for tourists, contemporary witnesses, and future generations.

  Project website

• Photo Lab Schleiz
• MSCJ Grant - DHNet reloaded
• SfL Teaching and Learning Lab Digital History

  Project duration: 25 months (2022–2024)

  Budget: €420,000 (total amount)

  Funding body: Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre, grant agreement no.: FRFMM-334/2022

  Further information can be found here (only in german) de.

Digital Applications (developed and maintained by the professorship) 

• 4D City - Mobile 4D viewer for location-based city information and visualization

  

  The 4D City application for mobile devices enables time-variant virtual 3D impressions of historic cities on a multi-device visual interface – that can be accessed via desktop, mobile devices, AR and VR glasses. 4D City feeds in realtime from other data providers with a minimal database of its own, primarily for caching. It enables virtual city tours and past play (e.g., digitally-enhanced discovery games) and provides access to knowledge assets from open-source platforms such as Wikipedia or tourist information platforms like Triposo. Link: https://4dcity.orgExternal link

• 4D Browser - 4D media browser to gain access to image collections and text

  

  The 4D Browser is used for the information presentation and as a research tool . Linking digital images and their actual location makes it possible to directly present resources and therefore proves a valuable support tool for historical research. Users of the virtual archives can benefit extensively from effective tools which enable search based not only on content and theme, but also location. A timeline provides information on the development of a city via filtering photos of different building conditions. Link:  https://4dbrowser.orgExternal link

• 3D Heritage - Low level photogrammetric reconstruction service

  

  3D Heritage is a low-end 3D digitization pipeline to document heritage with images taken with a smartphone. The goal is to document cultural heritage using images and 3D models from user-generated photos and to integrate the results in the DFG 3D-Viewer repository. 3D Heritage consists of a webpage frontend in multiple languages (currently English, German, Ukrainian, Russian and Arabic) providing a guided workflow to take images and upload them to the portal servers with metadata. Metadata can be freely added or retrieved from Wikipedia for object descriptions, ORCID for user information and Geonames for location information. After uploading, a server-side process is initialized, which uses a scripted Meshlab pipeline to create 3D models from these images. Link: https://3dheritage.euExternal link

• DFG 3D Viewer Test Repo - Experimental repository for 3D models of Cultural Heritage

  

  Within the DFG 3D Viewer framework (LinkExternal link) the Jena experimental repository provides a large scale and unique 3D model pool of currently 130.000+ 3D mesh models. Link: https://3drepo.eu/External link

• Heritage Monitor - Cultural Heritage projects, institutions, and publications across Europe

  

  The Heritage Monitor provides an overview about cultural heritage projects, institutions, and publications across Europe, helping researchers and policymakers clearly visualize research activity and gain insights into collaborations, funding, and emerging trends.

  Link: https://heritagemonitor.org/External link

• Heritage Data Processor - processing, enrichment, and management of digital cultural heritage assets

  

  The Heritage Data Processor (HDP) is a sophisticated, GUI, API, and Command-Line-driven application designed for the comprehensive processing, enrichment, and management of digital assets, with a primary focus on multimodality.

  Link: https://hdp.3drepo.eu/External link

• Time Machine - National contact point

  The TMO national contact point, financed by the state of Thuringia since 2020, serves to concert and network the 120 (as of 11/2020) German TMO member institutions and companies as well as the needs-based further development of the German community. As a demand-initiated support structure for economic exploitation, the dma-sceExternal link has been in the process of being founded as a European cooperative from the German TMO since 2020. Nine SMEs from Germany and Austria with business areas in the field of digital cultural heritage are financially involved in dma-sce i.G. as shareholders.

  Contact:

  Manuela Graf

  Email: projectscouting@timemachine.eu

• Time Machine - Project Scouting

  The TMO operates the Project Scouting ServiceExternal link, a support service that initiates competitive third-party funded projects, assists in finding project partners, provides comprehensive information on funding programs, and supports the formal and strategic review of proposals.

  Contact:

  Manuela Graf

  Email: projectscouting@timemachine.eu