About the Program

Profile

Digital Cultural Heritage is a new academic discipline within the umbrella of the Digital Humanities. This field is situated at the intersection of Cultural Heritage Studies, Conservation Science, Archaeology, Museology, Computer Science, and Information Science. This innovative field crosses disciplinary boundaries to create new theoretical frameworks and methodologies that enhance the exploration, understanding, and protection of the ancient world and alter the traditional processes of production and propagation of knowledge in museums and sites of cultural significance. Digital Cultural Heritage achieves these goals by asking and answering questions vital to studying the human experience and improving the understanding, preservation, and sustainable use of the cultural and material legacies of the past, including the data and information associated with them. Additionally, this discipline re-frames how scholars and students think about the past by developing deep relationships across the university-participant-stakeholder spectrum in ways that increase cultural heritage awareness and improve the quality of life for our partner communities and the world.

In the 2020s, the discipline is represented by four distinct subfields (or research profiles), which are also reflected in the Master's program Digital Cultural Heritage at LMU München through dedicated modules.

Subfield 1. DATA CAPTURE & PROCESSING:

This subfield focuses on investigating and protecting the cultural and material legacies of the past through digital and geospatial data collection, processing, and visualization. Our M.A. program trains students in innovative methods to gather, analyze, and visualize data for studying and monitoring archaeological sites, monuments, and museum collections. These techniques enhance our understanding by enabling precise 3D recording and analysis, revealing hidden or inaccessible information. This focus positions the program at the forefront of global efforts to combat the loss of cultural heritage caused by climate change, natural disasters, urban development, agricultural expansion, conflict, looting, and mass tourism, among other threats.

Subfield 2. DATA ANALYSIS, COMPUTATION, & PRESENTATION:

This subfield concentrates on analyzing the ancient world using computational, geospatial, or data science methods and presenting the resulting data in innovative ways. It includes established techniques like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Building Information Modeling (BIM), as well as cultural analytics, to manage and visualize data related to cultural heritage and archaeological sites. It also explores newer approaches, such as AI-based automated processing, classification, and analysis, to help humanistic disciplines gain new insights into the past and present. While these innovative tools show great potential, they also raise important questions: What challenges does AI pose in studying past cultures? How can we ensure that automated analysis of archaeological, architectural, and museum data remains ethical and respects institutional and community values? What policies or best practices can experts adopt to address these issues?

Subfield 3. DATA CURATION, PRESERVATION & SEMANTIC WEB:

This subfield develops theoretical and methodological frameworks for digital knowledge extraction, integration, representation, and preservation. A key focus is addressing the increasing loss of primary archaeological and cultural heritage data—such as field drawings, notes, photos, interpretations, and metadata—due to limited publication and preservation in the Digital Age. This issue has disproportionately impacted disciplines focusing on the study of culture due to a lack of funding for these tasks, a shortage of necessary technical skills, and resistance to publicly sharing sources and datasets. Our M.A. program redefines data management and curation as core activities that students will learn to make their data and protocols more sustainable. Training emphasizes best practices for data integration and knowledge representation, with the aim of converting cultural data into Linked Open Data for the semantic web, which is recognized as a leading digital innovation of the 2020s.

Subfield 4. OUTREACH & SOCIETAL ENGAGEMENT:

This subfield examines how digital technology impacts cultural heritage and society, including values and ethics, citizen participation, and science communication. Courses in our new M.A. program aim to deepen understanding of community-based, digitally engaged approaches to studying and protecting cultural heritage. These methods increase awareness and improve quality of life for the diverse communities that partner with researchers. Innovative perspectives change how scholars and students engage with the past and related stakeholder communities, such as residents, indigenous peoples, and visitors. They utilize tools like 3D reconstructions of ancient cities or monuments through Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR), user-generated content, and mobile apps. These approaches can highlight urgent social issues, such as conserving natural and cultural resources, and foster interested constituencies by boosting residents’ or visitors’ engagement with cultural heritage through experiential technology and digital simulations.

The Master's degree program in Digital Cultural Heritage aims to train both researchers and practitioners in the field of cultural heritage studies as specialists in a variety of digital techniques relevant for all four of these subfields. As in any other area of society, digitization is transforming research in the humanities as well as practice in cultural heritage and related disciplines and fields of activity.

Students in this program will acquire new knowledge, competencies and skills at the intersection of computer and information science, cultural studies and heritage studies. Future digital heritage professionals will have the advantage over specialists in the respective fields of study of being able to combine several essential skills in a way that is not taught in existing degree programs in the respective disciplines. These skills and competencies include:

• understanding of theoretical and methodological backgrounds and approaches, research interests and the types and characteristics of cultural data in (a particular area of) the humanities,
• acquiring knowledge of the theoretical, practical and ethical concerns and debates in the field of cultural heritage research,
• develop mastery of various digital techniques for capturing cultural data, ability to manage, structure, analyze and curate cultural data in a meaningful way with regard to research interests in the humanities and cultural studies as well as practical concerns of heritage conservation, etc.
• develop the ability to modify existing digital applications used in cultural studies and to discover, invent or develop new customized digital applications specifically for use in cultural studies.

Key Facts

Program Learning Outcomes

Graduates of the MA program Digital Cultural Heritage ...

• ... theorize and reflect critically on cultural heritage-related topics, develop existing theories further or develop new approaches and also apply their knowledge and thinking to related fields/disciplines.
• ... think in computer-based methods and approaches and solve new problems in the humanities and cultural sciences with the help of programming skills.
• ... collect, process, analyze, manage, curate and visualize cultural data using digital tools and methods.
• ... design research projects and write scientific papers.
• ... communicate with the general public and reflect the interests and needs of the social groups involved.
• ... reflect on and improve their skills, practice and self-understanding as researchers and/or practitioners, considering established ethical standards, guidelines and best practices in research design, data management and professional practice in the field of cultural heritage and related areas.

With these learning objectives, we prepare students for careers in academia and research as well as for careers as practitioners in the public, non-profit and private sectors. The particular strength of the Master's degree program in Digital Cultural Heritage lies in the combination of the following competencies in a coherent degree program:

• a strong focus on established and evolving digital methods and skills, including programming and responsible data management, which are increasingly in demand and essential but often not taught in established humanities and study of cultures programs;
• the indispensable training of critical thinking on both a theoretical and methodological level and the research orientation with a strong focus on the development and implementation of study and research projects already during the course of study;
• training in writing academic texts and in data visualization techniques as well as in communication skills with regard to communication with the general public and social actors outside the universities, which are becoming increasingly important in our science- and research-driven society;
• the opportunity to pursue further education in the students’ original sub-jects/disciplines, combined with a strongly interdisciplinary curriculum, which also includes strong integration with the Master degree Media Informatics, that prepares graduates for interdisciplinary research and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.

These skills set graduates of the program apart from their peers on established, discipline-specific programs, as they are better prepared for future developments in their disciplines in the context of digitalization and increasingly complex and interdisciplinary research agendas.

Overall, the program is intended to train students for professions and professional pro-files of the future (e.g. artificial intelligence-based cultural analytics, 3D digitization, mobile and geospatial technology, etc.), which are currently emerging.

Language Requirements

The Master degree program Digital Cultural Heritage can be studied fully in English. As a program in the Humanities and the Study of Cultures, it requires high competencies in English (corresponding to level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).

No proof of German language proficiency is required for admission to the program. However, the curriculum also includes elective courses in a number of other disciplines concerned with the Study of Cultures. As the respective programs are offered in German, most courses in these other disciplines are offered in German only. Therefore, you can only fully exploit these opportunities, if you have at least a good comprehension of German. In any case, a basic knowledge of German is strongly recommended, if not indispensable, for dealing with administrative and other matters. Of course, there are also opportunities to learn German for students in Munich.

Recommendations on German language