The 12th Linked Pasts Symposium will take place at the University of Porto from 23 to 25 November 2026, bringing together scholars, heritage professionals and practitioners interested in the application of Linked Open Data (LOD) to the study of history, archaeology, culture and cultural heritage.
The deadline for the symposium’s Call for Participation has been extended to 30 September 2026.
Linked Pasts distinguishes itself from the format of a conventional academic conference by placing collaboration at the centre of the programme. Rather than being primarily structured around formal research presentations, the symposium encourages goal-oriented discussions and collective work, with activities that may include tutorials, hackathons, standards development, project planning and other collaborative formats.
Proposals are currently invited for Sessions, Mini Demos and Posters.
Sessions may address any application of Linked Open Data to the historical and cultural domains, while Mini Demos offer participants an opportunity to present tools, services or methods and Posters may introduce early-stage research or preliminary results. Proposals should be submitted in English in the form of an abstract of 300-500 words.
Among the areas particularly encouraged for this edition are semantic annotation, gazetteer and ontology development and alignment, data enrichment and reconciliation, knowledge graphs, digital mapping and visualisation, approaches to uncertain or incomplete data, and the growing intersections between Linked Open Data and Artificial Intelligence.
Hosted by the CODA – Centre for Digital Culture and Innovation at the University of Porto, Linked Pasts provides an international forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange knowledge while actively developing new approaches, standards and collaborations around connected historical data.
The symposium is also a formal partner of the Pelagios Network, an international community dedicated to connecting information about historical places through open data.
Dates: 23-25 November 2026
Location: University of Porto, Portugal
Extended submission deadline: 30 September 2026
Further information and submission details:
https://linkedpasts.hcommons.org/
