[Commlist] CfP: Media Archaeology 2.0: Rethinking Media Histories with the Digital Humanities

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CfP: “Media Archaeology 2.0: Rethinking Media Histories with the Digital 
Humanities”
TMG Journal for Media History, special issue spring 2026

https://tmgonline.nl/announcements#call-for-papers-media-archaeology-20-rethinking-media-histories-with-the-digital-humanities

This special issue will explore the academic potential of crossovers 
between media archaeology and digital humanities. How can media 
archaeology, as a heterogeneous field interested in alternative and 
non-linear media trajectories, utilize computational tools, methods, and 
infrastructures to rethink media histories in the digital age? And how 
can digital humanities approaches draw on media-archaeological 
principles in research, database or interface design? In other words, 
how can we rethink media archaeology with the digital humanities and 
provoke a mutually beneficial dialog between them?

In the past few decades, media archaeology has emerged as a vibrant and 
interdisciplinary field, uncovering the forgotten paths and alternative 
histories of media technologies. From Friedrich Kittler's foundational 
work on discourse networks of technical media (1990; 1999) and Jonathan 
Crary's analysis of modern visuality and subjectivity (1990) to the 
influential studies of Erkki Huhtamo (1997; 2004; 2012), Siegfried 
Zielinski (1999; 2006), Thomas Elsaesser (2004; 2016), Wolfgang Ernst 
(2006; 2013), Anne Friedberg (2006), and Jussi Parikka (2007; 2010; 
2012), among others, the field has evolved dramatically. Driven by a 
generally shared interest in the materiality and temporality of past 
media technologies and their associated cultural discourses, practices 
and imaginaries (Kluitenberg 2006), media archaeologists have been 
"excavating" the past in order to better understand contemporary media 
cultures (Parikka 2012: 2). This collective effort ranges from 
reassessing the histories of modern media and communication technologies 
– such as cinema (Gunning 1990, Elsaesser 2016), radio (Peters 1999), 
television (Sconce 2000), and smartphones (Strauven 2021) – to analyzing 
phenomena like computer viruses (Parikka 2007), software (Chun 2011; 
Manovich 2001), and "elemental media" (Peters 2015).

In recent years, media archaeology, as a field, method, and way of 
understanding the world, has been embraced by diverse linguistic 
communities worldwide (Okubo 2023; Ito, ed. 2023) and has diversified 
both in its theoretical focus and methodology. We have seen it expand to 
theatre and performance (Wynants, ed. 2019), dashboards and data (Tkacz 
2022), image compression (Jancovic 2023), archaeology and gaming 
(Reinhard 2018), or appear as an organizing principle in recent 
Spanish-language edited volumes on media in artistic practice (Martínez, 
ed. 2022) as well as in chronicles documenting artist’s works (West 
2022). While Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka argued in Media 
Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications that there are 
no "correct principles or methodological guidelines" for conducting 
media archaeology (2011: 2), Ben Roberts and Mark Goodall position the 
practical question "How is media archaeology?" at the center of their 
volume New Media Archaeologies (2019: 11). In recognition of the latest 
tendencies, including an increased interest in hands-on, experimental, 
and laboratory-based approaches (Hall and Ellis, ed. 2019, Fickers and 
Van den Oever 2019; Wershler, Parikka, and Emerson 2022; Fossati and Van 
den Oever 2016), they propose three directions: Media Archaeology 
Theory, Experimental Media Archaeology, and Media Archaeology at the 
Interface.

However, the question of how recent developments in the digital 
humanities – including artificial intelligence and computer vision 
technologies (Arnold and Tilton 2023), 3D modelling and printing (Van 
der Heijden and Wolf 2022; Devadder et al. 2024), and AR/VR/XR 
technologies (Elkhuizen et al. 2024; Harkema and Rosendaal 2020) – can 
be leveraged for media-archaeological and historical inquiry, and 
possibly for new forms of digital storytelling (Georgiakakis and Van der 
Heijden 2024; Miller 2004), remains largely unexplored.

This special issue aims to address this gap and further investigate the 
exciting intersections between media archaeology and digital humanities 
(cf. Dang, Van der Heijden, and Olesen 2025). How do computational 
tools, methodologies, and infrastructures reshape the ways we excavate, 
analyze, and reimagine media histories? How can these technologies be 
used to construct (and deconstruct) data-driven media-historical 
narratives? In what ways might AR/VR/XR technologies enable new sensory 
modes of media-archaeological and historical inquiry? How can digital 
technologies facilitate media-archaeological experimentation and 
documentation (Van der Heijden and Kolkowski 2023; Fickers and Van den 
Oever 2022)? Can 3D modelling simulate the materiality, functionality, 
and histories of use of media artefacts? How can such digital 
reconstruction methods stimulate historical imagination in both 
scholarly and pedagogical contexts? And could computational methods 
provide a solution to some of the criticisms that media-archaeological 
writings have faced for being closed off to issues of corporeality, 
disability, gender or sexuality (Mills and Sterne 2017; Skågeby and Rahm 
2018; Törneman 2019; Jancovic 2023)?

Conversely, could the digital humanities benefit from a 
media-archaeological commitment to play, hacking, tinkering, and 
breaking things (Strauven 2015)? Can media archaeology’s 
anti-teleological mindset – oriented towards the non-linear, fragmented, 
overlooked, imagined and anomalous – inform different ways of 
collecting, interpreting and representing data? Can an awareness of the 
dissonant and overlapping temporalities of media and perception provoke 
more nuanced strategies for working with datasets or digital 
collections? Could a media-archaeological emphasis on failure, 
obsolescence or recurrence expand the theoretical repertoire of digital 
humanities? Could combining, exchanging and borrowing methods and 
concepts across both these fields lead to new insights about media, 
materiality, and the environment?

This special issue of TMG Journal for Media History seeks to reflect on 
these questions and stimulate what we provocatively call "Media 
Archaeology 2.0". We invite contributors to examine the potentials and 
challenges of digital approaches to media-archaeological research and 
teaching, and, vice versa, of media-archaeological perspectives on 
digital humanities, as well as their methodological and epistemological 
implications, frictions, and consonances.

We welcome contributions dealing with, but not limited to, the following 
topics:
- Digital approaches and methods in media-archaeological research and 
teaching, including AI and computer vision, 3D modelling, AR/VR/XR 
technologies
- Digital materialities, temporalities, infrastructures and ecologies in 
media archaeology research
- Digital archives, media laboratories, and audiovisual collections
- Digital pedagogies and experimental methods in online teaching
- Digital storytelling and annotation in media-archaeological narratives
- Non-linear, speculative and innovative forms of data visualization and 
storytelling
- Data- and database-driven modes of media-archaeological exploration
- Use of computational tools in experimental practices or investigations 
of "elemental media"
- Digital humanities approaches to the materiality and temporality of 
media: subdued and forgotten histories of raw materials, 
techno-ecologies, and media practices
- Ludic, experimental and “archaeological” ways of doing digital humanities
- Digital archaeologies of gender, colonialism, and of the more-than-human
- Politics of digitization, archiving, standardization, image 
compression, and digital media formats
- Materialities and future imaginaries of digital media, networks, 
infrastructures, and artificial intelligence
- Artistic applications of digital methodologies, including 3D 
animations, data visualizations, and interfaces for media historical 
collections
- Histories/archaeologies and future possibilities of media archaeology 
as a field of practice
- Challenges and opportunities that recent computational/media 
technologies like AI and LLMs pose to scientific practice and to 
archaeologies of scientific knowledge

Submission guidelines​
Abstract submissions are due on 1 May 2025. Please send a 300-word 
abstract and short bio via e-mail to: (tim.vanderheijden /at/ ou.nl). Selected 
authors shall be invited to submit an article of 6,000-8,000 words 
(including notes) by 15 September 2025. Revised drafts are expected by 
15 January 2026. The expected publishing date of this special issue of 
TMG Journal for Media History is in spring 2026.

Contributions should be in English. Authors are to submit original 
papers that are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. No 
payment from the authors will be required. Final acceptance depends on a 
double-blind peer review process of the manuscripts. Contributions that 
receive positive reviews but are not accepted for the special issue may 
be considered for publication in another issue of TMG Journal for Media 
History.

No payment from the authors will be required.

If you have questions, please contact the editors of the special issue, 
dr. Tim van der Heijden ((tim.vanderheijden /at/ ou.nl)) and dr. Marek 
Jancovic ((m.jancovic /at/ vu.nl)).

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