KU LEUVEN
Profile of the organisation
The Media Lab of the Institute for Cultural Studies at KU Leuven’s Faculty of Arts specialises in e-learning for the Humanities and digital cultural heritage. The Centre’s director, Prof. Frederik Truyen, chaired the E-Learning steering committee of KU Leuven, exploiting a large scale embedded VLE with more than 75.000 users. Together with Alinari, CS Digital has been involved in Euridice (www.euridice-edu.org) and eRmione (www.ermione-edu.org). The Photolab Faculty of Arts also hosts the dArts digital photo repository, (230.000+ digitized images with high-quality metadata). Ku Leuven si promotor of the CIP project EuropeanaPhotography (http://www.europeana-photography.eu).
Role in the project
KU Leuven, coordinator of EuropeanaPhotography, will be task leader of the Photography Pilot in WP4. Building upon its experience as a coordinator, KU Leuven is ideally placed to carry the project’s results one step further: from the presentation and description of digitized early photographs to their creative (re)use and exploitation, through a process of conceptualization – scenario – validation – incubation. Because of its public/private profile, the EuropeanaPhotography network has considered itself with issues related to conservation, preservation and valorization, as well as with business models and educational programs involving the use of Europeana content. Because of KU Leuven’s link with the EuropeanaPhotography network, opportunities remain to include new material of the content providers in EuropeanaSpace. KU Leuven will also act as WP5 leader, focusing on different types and aspects of Exploitation of Europeana assets. Next to market research and analysis, the development of business models and marketing strategies, this WP will address educational opportunities. As a world-renowned knowledge center with an extensive track record in EC projects, KU Leuven is well positioned to bring together these different fields of activity and to effectively manage the task leaders and project partners collaborating within WP5. Moreover, KU Leuven will be able to contribute specifically to EuropeanaSpace’s educational ventures, by providing a test bed with the students of its Master in Cultural Studies.KU Leuven will physically host the EuropeanaSpace PhotoLab. KU Leuven has an extensive track record within the context of large-scale projects involving such high-tech labs, among which the RICH- and the Flandrica-project.
Key personnel
Prof. dr. Frederik Truyen (°1961) is associate professor at the Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven. He publishes on E-Learning, ICT Education, Digital Culture and Epistemology. Head of ICT Services at the Faculty of Arts. In charge of the mediaLab CS Digital. He teaches Information Science at the BA and Online Publishing at the MA level. Active on ICT at several levels of the University, mostly related to Web technology and E-Learning; chairman of the ICT council for Humanities and Social Sciences; Board Member of the Leuven Institute for Irish Studies; involved in many projects on Open Educational Resources, such as OER-HE, Net-CU and OCW EU, and on digitization of Cultural Heritage, such as IDEM, RICH and EuropeanaPhotography. He is program director of the MA in Cultural Studies.
Bruno Vandermeulen is Coordinator of Digital Photography, ICT services and Art Patrimony of KU Leuven. He has been involved in large scale inventory and digitization projects in the field of Cultural Heritage (a.o. RICH), is in charge of digital asset management, and of the Digitization Lab of KU Leuven.
Hans Coppens is coordinator of ICT and Education at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. He is a web-developer with expertise in Drupal CMS solutions, E-Learning and Social software. His research is oriented towards e-learning for the Humanities.
Sofie Taes graduated in musicology (2004) and Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2005). She has been working as a research assistant at the Musicology Research Unit of KU Leuven (Alamire Foundation) before joining the Institute for Cultural Studies (2013), a.o. collaborating on EuropeanaPhotography.
