Call for Chapters:
Minimal Computing for Social and Cultural Heritage

This edited collection will explore how principles of minimal computing, understood as low-resource, sustainable, and ethically grounded digital practice, can be applied to the preservation and curation of social and cultural heritage.

At a time when digital heritage infrastructures are increasingly shaped by platform-dependent systems, this volume asks a fundamental question: what forms of digital practice are genuinely sustainable, not only technically and economically, but socially and culturally, for the communities who produce and maintain heritage?

The book brings together scholars and practitioners to examine how lightweight technologies, decentralised infrastructures, and community-led approaches can address structural inequalities in digital heritage.

This book will be peer-reviewed and published as an open access volume, ensuring wide and equitable availability for academic, professional, and community audiences.

Scope and Themes

We invite contributions that engage critically and/or empirically with minimal computing in relation to social and cultural heritage. We are particularly interested in work that addresses sustainability in its fullest sense, including environmental impact, economic feasibility, and community viability.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Low-resource and low-energy approaches to digital preservation and curation
• Community-led and participatory heritage infrastructures
• Decentralised, local, or sovereign digital systems
• Equity, exclusion, and access in digital heritage practices
• Maintenance, longevity, and the problem of digital obsolescence
• Ethical and political dimensions of cultural data stewardship
• Design methodologies for minimal or appropriate technologies
• Case studies from under-resourced organisations or marginalised communities
• Critiques of scale, extraction, and platform dependency in digital heritage
• The relationship between minimal computing and cultural sustainability

The volume is explicitly interdisciplinary, and so we welcome contributions from, among others, scholars and practitioners across digital humanities, cultural and heritage studies, human–computer interaction, digital design, community-engaged and participatory research, media and communication studies, information studies, and archival studies.

Contribution Formats and Submission Process

Expressions of interest should be sent to Dr Olga Concetta Patroni <OPatroni@ucc.ie> and Dr James O’Sullivan <james.osullivan@ucc.ie> by 30 April 2026, 17:00 (Irish Standard Time).

Submissions should include:

• A brief abstract of the proposed contribution (maximum 200 words), indicating the intended format (full chapter or short contribution)
• A brief biographical note for author(s)

Authors of selected proposals will be invited to submit full contributions.

We welcome two types of contributions:

• Full Chapters of 6,000–10,000 words in length, presenting substantial theoretical, empirical, or case-based contributions
• Short Contributions of approximately 3,000 words in length, which may include reflective case studies, practice reports, interviews, position pieces, methodological notes, or community perspectives

All contributions will be peer-reviewed.

Final submissions will be due in December 2026.

About Minimal Curation

The collection is being developed by the Minimal Curation project, generously funded by Research Ireland, which investigates sustainable, low-resource approaches to digital sociocultural heritage. The project focuses on identifying practical alternatives to high-cost and high-dependency digital infrastructures, with particular attention to the needs of smaller organisations and community groups.