Open and Engaged 2025
Who Owns Our Knowledge? Exploring ownership, access, and stewardship of cultural heritage in the new era.
The British Library is delighted to host its annual Open and Engaged Conference online, over three non-consecutive afternoons: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, in the week of 20 October, as part of the International Open Access Week.
This year’s Open and Engaged Conference aligns with the Open Access Week 2025 theme, “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, by exploring the power, ethics, and responsibility embedded in how cultural heritage is created, shared, and preserved.
Through keynotes, panels, presentations and lightning talks, the programme addresses questions of ownership and stewardship in the areas of practice-research, cultural heritage data, open infrastructure, and emerging technologies. By bringing together GLAM professionals, librarians, curators, technologists, and community partners, the conference invites participants to reimagine ownership as a shared, equitable, and inclusive endeavour.
The conference took place online over three non-consecutive afternoons: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, in the week of 20 October, scheduled in the UK time zone (BST/UTC+1).
Programme Overview
Recordings and the slides are now available in the British Library's Research Repository and each title is hyperlinked to the relevant record.
Day 1 – Monday 20 October (register)
13:30- 13:45 Welcome remarks
13:45- 15:00 Session on Ownership and Access in Cultural Heritage. Chaired by William Nixon, Deputy Executive Director of Research Libraries UK.
Kristina Rose, Data Coordinator at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. DE-BIAS: Detecting and contextualizing biassed language in metadata.
Marieke van Erp, Department Head DHLab, KNAW Humanities Cluster & Co-scientific Director Cultural AI Lab. Making AI More Culturally Aware: Promises, Pitfalls and Practical Examples from the Cultural AI Lab.
Florence Devouard, Co-Executive Director of Wiki in Africa. Decolonising Knowledge on Wikipedia.
Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy and Open Culture of Creative Commons. Activating open solutions for more equitable access to heritage in the digital environment.
15:00- 15:00 Break
15:30- 16:25 Keynote Speech. Chaired by Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library.
Camille Callison, Chair of National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA). Embracing Open Access & Ensuring Indigenous Knowledge & Data Sovereignty. (recording only)
16:30- Closing remarks
Day 2 – Wednesday 22 October (register)
13:30- 13:40 Welcome remarks
13:40- 14:45 Lightning talks: Sharing responsibly while navigating risks, ethics, and community needs. Chaired by Jez Cope, Data Services Lead at the British Library.
William Waites, Principal Research Engineer at the University of Southampton, Safeguarding Research and Culture. SRC and SciOp -- Safeguarding Digital Artefacts under Threat.
Lynda Kellam and Lena Bohman, Founding organizers of the Data Rescue Project. Rescuing U.S. Federal Data with the Data Rescue Project.
Revekka Kefalea, Independent Researcher, Project Manager at Inter Alia. From Caution to Care: A Living Risk Management Toolkit for Open GLAM.
Blanka Matkovic, Data Services Specialist at the British Library. The Challenges of Implementing and Operationalising the CARE Principles.
Jennifer Macmillan, Collections Systems Specialist at the British Film Institute. The Sensational Museum at the BFI: redefining ‘accessible’.
14:45- 15:15 Break
15:15- 16:25 Session on Technology, Power, and Equitable Design. Chaired by Rosie Higman, Open Research Services Manager, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Ashley Rojas, Integration Specialist & Web Developer at Local Contexts. Implementing CARE Principles: Indigenous Data Governance using the Local Contexts Hub.
Silvio Peroni, Director of OpenCitations. The path to open: premises and achievements after more than a decade of OpenCitations. (slides only)
Rupert Gatti, Director of Thoth Open Metadata and Open Book Publishers. Enabling equity in scholarly publishing with open infrastructures and open metadata. (slides only)
16:30- Closing remarks
Day 3 - Thursday 23 October (register)
13:30- 13:45 Welcome remarks 13:45- 15:00 Session on Access to GLAM Research: Repository Showcases. Chaired by Joanna Norman , Director of the V&A Research Institute, National Art Library and Archives, V&A.
Dr Tim Evans, Assistant Director of the Archaeology Data Service and Heritage Science Data Service. Repository services for Archaeology, and Conservation and Heritage Science.
Sarah Molloy, Head of Library Research Support at Queen Mary University of London, and Co-Investigator, Enact Project. Introducing the Enact Practice Research Data Service. (slides only)
Jenny Basford, Repository Services Lead at the British Library. Cultivating Cultural Heritage Research: Growing the Shared Repository Service for GLAM institutions.
15:00- 15:30 Break
15:30- 16:25 Closing Keynote. Chaired by Dr Mia Ridge is the British Library’s Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections.
Lorna M. Hughes, Professor of Digital Humanities and Dean for Global Engagement (Europe), University of Glasgow. Long Walk Home: creating, sharing and using community generated digital heritage at scale.
16:30- Closing remarks
Registration
Registration is closed
Open and Engaged 2025 Conference is free to attend, but registration is required for each day. Please make sure to register separately for each day using the links provided above (also listed below). Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email with the event link for the day you selected.
Register here for the Day 1 – Monday 20 October 2025
Register here for the Day 2 – Wednesday 22 October 2025
Register here for the Day 3 - Thursday 23 October 2025
Contact us
The hashtag for the event is #OpenEngaged on social media platform of your choice. If you have any questions, please contact us at openaccess[at]bl.uk.
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