Building staff-student partnerships to support sustainability for all by co-designing a carbon descent board game

Presentation (2022, March)

Carbonopolis: Letz bring it down! is a prototype board game that stimulates awareness and encourages exchange on six climate change topics impacting Luxembourg: urban heat islands, extreme weather ... [more ▼]

Carbonopolis: Letz bring it down! is a prototype board game that stimulates awareness and encourages exchange on six climate change topics impacting Luxembourg: urban heat islands, extreme weather, quality of life, mobility, housing and the food system. Whilst playing, participants discover and discuss potential sustainable planning initiatives for carbon descent. Aimed at groups of multicultural players, the game was inspired by snakes and ladders and integrates three type of playing cards: (1) multiple-choice questions for knowledge testing (2) planning initiative cards for value-driven policy prioritisation and (3) crisis cards for critically reflecting on current policy impacts. The initial game design was conceived by two academics. Then in the spirit of co-design, as a sustainability action for all, and with the goal of building partnerships beyond the formal curriculum we integrated three Master student assistants and one doctoral student into the process, especially in the graphic design and game evaluation. During play sessions students assumed different roles: players, game leaders and game observers. The game provided an opportunity to raise awareness of local sustainability challenges and nurture future advocates. Additionally, the process provided an interactive and playful method for new co-productive curriculum development and the development of team-based relationships between staff and students. [less ▲]

Luxembourg 2050 - A Guide on Repairing Commercial Zones : Report Phase 3

Report (2022)

Mapping citizens’ reflections and perceptions of place-based experiences in the time of COVID-19

Scientific Conference (2021, April 14)

Using a Citizen Science Approach, the ZesummenMaps project explores the emergent spatial interactions of our towns, cities and rural areas that arise from the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing and ... [more ▼]

Using a Citizen Science Approach, the ZesummenMaps project explores the emergent spatial interactions of our towns, cities and rural areas that arise from the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing and confinement policies in Luxembourg and the Greater Region. Citizens (residents, students, cross-border workers) reflect on their personal experiences of place during the crises. They contribute thoughts and perceptions through a collaborative community-mapping interface. This provides a foundation to explore, evaluate and understand the evolving perceptions and uses of public spaces, infrastructures and physical environments. Thus, creating an evidence-base of emerging spatial interactions to inform understanding of the impact of the "bleift doheem" policy (stay at home, confinement, lockdown) related to our perceptions and uses of our towns, cities and rural areas. [less ▲]

Smart Cities at Play: Technology and Emerging forms of playfulness

in Behaviour and Information Technology (2020), 39(6), 607-609

The Enthusiast, the Interested, the Sceptic, and the Cynic: Understanding User Experience and Perceived Value in Location-Based Cultural Heritage Games Through Qualitative and Sentiment Analysis

in Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (2019), 12(1),

We discuss the user study of a mobile cultural heritage game, designed to stimulate reflection about a city’s history. Aided by location-aware technology, the game fosters the serendipitous discovery of ... [more ▼]

We discuss the user study of a mobile cultural heritage game, designed to stimulate reflection about a city’s history. Aided by location-aware technology, the game fosters the serendipitous discovery of Points-Of-Interest, historical images and stories, whilst players wander the city. This exploration differs from the typical pre-calculated path recommendations used by other location-based applications. It triggers reflection about the city’s past that is as unique as its visitors. Ours is one of the first studies to attempt an understanding of the effects of serendipitous urban discovery and historic reflection-triggering technologies on user experience. We combined field trials with controlled experiments, analysing perceptions of the experience and value using responses expressed in open-ended questionnaire items. Using thematic coding and sentiment analysis, we observed types of emotional responses, indicating four potential profiles of their likelihood towards future technology adoption. Enthusiastic and Interested users appreciated the freedom of movement choice that created an autonomous experience that fostered a sense of personal accomplishment. The interface interactions of the game, designed to stimulate reflection, supported a feeling of connectedness to others. In contrast, Cynical and Sceptical users were less tolerant of perceived technological issues, and required more perfection in functionality and design. These users are less likely to be the early adopters of serendipitous location-based apps. The game was developed as part of a large cultural informatics project, but unlike typical evaluations, we conducted this study midway through the project and not at its end. This approach (1) gave the team the possibility to take stock, pause and reflect and (2) provided insight on future design improvements for increasing the perceived value of serendipitous urban discovery applications. Our results contribute towards a grounded understanding of user experience, and help progress the development of cultural heritage applications that incorporate elements of reflection and/or place-based exploration into their functionalities. [less ▲]

Technology-Powered Strategies to Rethink the Pedagogy of History and Cultural Heritage through Symmetries and Narratives

in Symmetry (2019), 11(3),

Recent advances in semantic web and deep learning technologies enable new means for the computational analysis of vast amounts of information from the field of digital humanities. We discuss how some of ... [more ▼]

Recent advances in semantic web and deep learning technologies enable new means for the computational analysis of vast amounts of information from the field of digital humanities. We discuss how some of the techniques can be used to identify historical and cultural symmetries between different characters, locations, events or venues, and how these can be harnessed to develop new strategies to promote intercultural and cross-border aspects that support the teaching and learning of history and heritage. The strategies have been put to the test in the context of the European project CrossCult, revealing enormous potential to encourage curiosity to discover new information and increase retention of learned information [less ▲]

Empowering reuse of digital cultural heritage in context-aware crosscuts of European history

in Wallace, M; Antoniou, A (Eds.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Cultural Informatics co-located with the EUROMED International Conference on Digital Heritage 2018 (EUROMED 2018) (2018, November 03)

The paper presents the H2020 CrossCult project, providing a short overview, a summary of the platform developed by the project, a description of the consortium, lessons learnt in three main dimensions ... [more ▼]

The paper presents the H2020 CrossCult project, providing a short overview, a summary of the platform developed by the project, a description of the consortium, lessons learnt in three main dimensions (humanities, technology and business), the open challenges and the main tools developed by the project. [less ▲]

Building Bridges Across Heritage Silos

Poster (2018, June)

This research considers how best to cross the divides that exist between: (1) disparate practices between research fields (2) disparate interpretations of shared cultural heritage by the public and (3 ... [more ▼]

This research considers how best to cross the divides that exist between: (1) disparate practices between research fields (2) disparate interpretations of shared cultural heritage by the public and (3) disparate cultural heritage objects. [less ▲]

Socio-spatial visualisations of cultural routes: Exploring collective memory on Instagram

in Netcom (2018)

Cultural routes, defined as routes of historical importance that geographically represent the shared and living cultural heritage of different countries, have recently gained attention both as tourist ... [more ▼]

Cultural routes, defined as routes of historical importance that geographically represent the shared and living cultural heritage of different countries, have recently gained attention both as tourist destinations and as social repositories of collective local memories. In this paper we argue that the recent development of digital humanities can open interesting new perspectives for the empirical exploration of these routes as cultural objects. Indeed, the availability of new digital traces generated by human activities and social media combined with tools that facilitate the exploration of such traces allow researchers to create new types of fieldwork online. In this paper, we present a case study focused on the Via Francigena cultural route. We added a geographical component to a graph analysis tool called histograph, making it possible to explore and analyse a corpus of more than 8,000 Instagram pictures. We investigate the potential of the prototype to uncover socio-spatial relations related to the itinerary and to hypothesise about the collective memories that the route conveys in this corpus. [less ▲]

Dynamic qualitative filtering for linked (geo)visualisations: a prototype for exploring the collective memory of Instagram posts

Scientific Conference (2017, April 20)

This paper describes a prototype geo extension to an open source graph-based tool designed for analysing co-occurrence in large multimedia collections of historical resources. Employing an ... [more ▼]

This paper describes a prototype geo extension to an open source graph-based tool designed for analysing co-occurrence in large multimedia collections of historical resources. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, combining tools and practices from humanities and geography, we explore how it can be extended to facilitate both social and spatial enquiry. For the prototype development we use Instagram resources that reference the Via Francigena – a significant cultural route connecting Canterbury, UK and Rome, Italy. The resulting tool facilitates dynamic qualitative filtering and multilevel views to explore the social-spatial collective memory of this cultural route [less ▲]