“DigitaLab” is a Digital Humanities laboratory where Unistrapg students learn to use digital tools in the field of humanities, promoting a constant exchange of data and information. It is organized as a working and research group whose members include university faculty, administrative staff, and external collaborators.
The main goal is to enhance the University’s documentary heritage for the study of the history of Italian as a second language learning; the promotion of Italian culture worldwide; and the certification of Italian language knowledge for non-native speakers.
For the study and digitization of the Historical Archive, research projects that DigitaLab intends to further develop have already been underway for three years: since February 2024, the “Alumni Archivio Storico Unistrapg” database, the Digital Gallery of the Unistrapg Historical Archive, and the textual database “Italiano L2 Archivio Storico Unistrapg” have been available, all designed by the Codex Cooperative of Pavia and funded by the Perugia Foundation (2022-2024).
How DigitaLab works
DigitaLab is not a “laboratory” in the sense we usually give this word in educational planning: the main players are the students—they are the ones who handle the key activities, communicate, and promote the initiatives carried out and the projects developed from time to time. Group members (faculty, internal and external staff, technical-administrative personnel, external experts) are responsible for supervising, guiding, and coordinating the activities, following a principle of open and shared participation.
DigitaLab has two professional scanners and a PC available in the library card catalog room (Palazzina Valitutti).
Some of the objectives of DigitaLab are:
- to provide training and updates on digital culture, digital humanities, and humanities computing
- to enhance the University’s documentary and library heritage through digitization
- to set up digital databases
Roberto Vetrugno (coordinator)
Teaching Staff
Antonio Catolfi
Federico Giordano
Giacomo Nencioni
Letizia Cinganotto
Laura Refe
Cristina Gaggioli
Valentino Santucci
Administrative Staff
Gustavo Rella (head of administrative staff)
Luigi Biagetti
Giuseppe Costantini
Riccardo Giubboni
Filippo Nicchi
Michele Schippa
Alumni Historical Archive Unistrapg
Collections of data relating to those enrolled at Unistrapg during the twentieth century (1926-1987), divided by continents and countries, drawing from the “Student Secretariat” archive series, which preserves information about Stranieri students who came to Perugia throughout the twentieth century from different parts of the world. The activity was initiated by a group coordinated by Prof. Chiara Biscarini, who created an initial digital map showing the flows of students arriving from various parts of the world over the decades of the twentieth century.
Digital Gallery of the Unistrapg Historical Archive
Allows viewing and studying the most significant documents preserved in the Historical Archive; it is divided into digital rooms, each dedicated to specific documentary themes explored during the December 2021 conference on the Historical Archive (for example: Maria Montessori and the Center for Pedagogical Studies; the friendship and correspondence between Romeo Gallenga and Gabriele D’Annunzio; the founding of the university and the first courses; the 1930s and relations with Fascism; Jewish students and the beginning of the war; Capitini as commissioner; the postwar period and the rebirth of the University; teachers and language courses; advanced cultural courses; Italian cinema at Stranieri, etc.). Additionally, the aim is to catalog, select, and study the photographic collection to be included in the “Digital Gallery”: thanks to Dr. Cristiana Palma, cataloguing of high-definition digitized photos by technical and administrative staff has been underway for a year. During cataloging, the photos are selected and will be grouped into the photographic “rooms” of the Digital Gallery, under the supervision of Professors Catolfi, Nencioni, and Giordano. The main goal is the systematic expansion of these documentary pathways to enhance the value of the collection.
Italian L2 Historical Archive Unistrapg
The creation of this textual database allows for the study of exam papers preserved in the “Exams” series to delve into the phenomenology of errors in texts produced between 1926 and 1987: one of the activities is the transcription and TEI annotation of the errors, categorized by aspects of the language (spelling, phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicon, textuality) and by type (overextension, interference, etc.), so that the database can provide, through a dedicated Library, collections of learning variety errors. This would establish a diachronic (1926–1987) corpus of Italian L2 written texts.
Corpora of Italian Letters (CEpI)
(Scheduled for 2024) the activation of a database dedicated to private letter writing, with various chronological, thematic, and genre-based sections (one will focus on women’s letter writing), thereby enabling searchable letters, linked to the GlossApp application. To further promote our uniqueness, this initiative includes the establishment of a section dedicated to the epistolary production of foreigners in ancient and pre-unification Italian. CEpI inherits part of the texts annotated for the AITER database (Italian Archive of Epistolary Texts Online) at the University of Pavia (2007–2013), with which a collaboration agreement is planned. This section requires DigitaLab to help students, PhD students, researchers, and teachers acquire competencies in transcribing and annotating texts—literary and otherwise—of Italian linguistic history, thanks to programmed training seminars.
Seminars and Study Days
DigitaLab aims to update students, PhD candidates, researchers, faculty, and administrative staff with meetings and seminars featuring external experts: starting from October 2022, eight meetings dedicated to digital culture have taken place:
- Roberto Vetrugno, The DigitaLab: a digital laboratory for DH (October 26, 2022)
- Cristina Marra, Philosophy in and for the digital age: theoretical issues and practical experiences (November 30, 2023)
- Giovanni Caprioli, The digital environment in Italian schools (December 7, 2022)
- Giuseppe Previtali, What are the Digital Humanities (March 3, 2023)
- Giovanna Giubbini, Emma Bianchi, Alessandro Bianchi, The digitization of municipal statutes and land registries of Umbria (May 17, 2023)
- Flavio Santi, Writing, translating in the digital era (with Enrico Terrinoni) (March 22, 2023)
- Gianfranco Crupi, What is a digital library (May 9, 2023)
- Enrica Salvatori, What choices for the digital edition of a source: considerations on the case of the Pelavicino Code (December 11, 2023)
These seminars were recorded on Teams and will soon be available on the course website for students and faculty of the university.