11th COMPUTATIONAL ARCHIVAL SCIENCE (CAS) WORKSHOP
Tue. Dec. 15, 2026 (TBD)
Part of: 2026 IEEE Big Data Conference (IEEE BigData 2026)
https://bigdataieee.org/BigData2026/
Dec. 14-17, 2026 -- Phoenix, AZ
IMPORTANT DEADLINES (tentative dates – to be updated):
· Saturday, Nov. 9, 2026 (final): Due date for full workshop papers submission
· Saturday, Nov 16, 2026: Notification of paper acceptance to authors
· Saturday, Nov 23, 2026 (hard deadline): Camera-ready of accepted papers
· Tuesday, Dec 15, 2026: Day-long CAS workshop (in person) in Phoenix AZ, USA
· If you are planning on attending the workshop, please contact mark.hedges at kcl.ac.uk for registration details!
See: https://ai-collaboratory.net/ieee-big-data-2026-cas-11/ for the latest updates and schedule.
COMPUTATIONAL ARCHIVAL SCIENCE: digital records in the age of big data
INTRODUCTION TO WORKSHOP [also see our CAS Portal]:
The large-scale digitization of analogue archives, the emerging diverse forms of born-digital archive, and the new ways in which researchers across disciplines (as well as the public)wish to engage with archival material, are resulting in disruptions to transitional archival theories and practices. Increasing quantities of ‘big archival data’ present challenges for the practitioners and researchers who work with archival material, but also offer enhanced possibilities for scholarship, through the application both of computational methods and tools to the archival problem space and of archival methods and tools to computational problems such as trusted computing, as well as, more fundamentally, through the integration of computational thinking with archival thinking.
Our working definition of Archival Computational Science (CAS) is:
A transdisciplinary field grounded in archival, information, and computational science that is concerned with the application of computational methods and resources, design patterns, sociotechnical constructs, and human-technology interaction, to large-scale (big data) records/archives processing, analysis, storage, long-term preservation, and access problems, with the aim of improving and optimizing efficiency, authenticity, truthfulness, provenance, productivity, computation, information structure and design, precision, and human technology interaction in support of acquisition, appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, communication, transmission, analysis, and access decision. [refined by Nathaniel Payne (2018)]
OBJECTIVES
This workshop will explore the conjunction (and its consequences) of emerging methods and technologies around big data with archival practice (including record keeping) and new forms of analysis and historical, social, scientific, and cultural research engagement with archives.We aim to identify and evaluate current trends, requirements, and potential in these areas, to examine the new questions that they can provoke, and to help determine possible research agendas for the evolution of computational archival science in the coming years. At the same time, we will address the questions and concerns scholarship is raising about the interpretation of ‘big data’ and the uses to which it is put, in particular appraising the challenges of producing quality–meaning, knowledge and value–from quantity, tracing data and analytic provenance across complex ‘big data’ platforms and knowledge production ecosystems, and addressing data privacy issues.
This will be the 11th workshop at IEEE Big Data addressing Computational Archival Science (CAS), following on from workshops in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. It also builds on three earlier workshops on ‘Big Humanities Data’ organized by the same chairs at the 2013-2015 conferences, and more directly on a 2016 symposium held in April 2016 at the University of Maryland.
All papers accepted for the workshop will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press.
RESEARCH TOPICS COVERED:
Topics covered by the workshop include, but are not restricted to, the following:
PROGRAM CHAIRS:
Dr. Mark Hedges
Department of Digital Humanities (DDH)
King’s College London, UK
Prof. Victoria Lemieux
School of Information
University of British Columbia, CANADA
Prof. Richard Marciano
Advanced Information Collaboratory (AIC)
College of Information Studies
University of Maryland, USA