We are delighted to announce that Philip Crowe (University College Dublin) will be the keynote speaker at AIUCD 2026.
Philip’s research focuses on urban resilience and climate adaptation, with particular emphasis on the revitalisation of Ireland’s historic town centres. Co-founder of the UCD Centre for Irish Towns (https://www.ucd.ie/cfit/), his work explores heritage reactivation as a form of climate action, examines strategies to understand and address vacancy and dereliction, and seeks to quantify the carbon benefits of adaptive reuse. Digital tools and methods play a central role in his research — both for spatial data analysis and the modelling of heritage intervention scenarios, and, crucially, for public engagement: digital platforms become a means to actively involve local communities, make research findings accessible, and sustain co-design processes with the territories concerned.
He has recently submitted a paper to Frontiers in Built Environment presenting baseline findings from the HeritACT project, an EU Horizon Europe initiative linking the European Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus, and cultural heritage activation. The research investigates how cultural heritage activation projects co-designed with local communities can contribute to climate action.
His keynote will be discussed and commented on by two leading voices in European digital humanities:
🔹 Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna) — Full Professor of Archival Science, Bibliography and Library Science, Director of DH.ARC, Coordinator of the CHeDE PhD Programme in Cultural Heritage in the Digital Ecosystem, and former AIUCD president.
https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/francesca.tomasi/en
🔹 Arianna Ciula (King’s College London) — Director and Principal Research Software Analyst at King’s Digital Lab.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/arianna-ciula
We look forward to seeing you there!