Paper short abstract:

What are the methodological implications when new forms of dialogue change the patterns of interaction with the public?

Paper long abstract:

How shall we engage with historical collections of everyday life in the future? Without efforts connecting people to the past and to each other, cultural heritage institutions such as the archive are nothing more than "an empty box, an institution whose special role is the guardianship of the document" (Appadurai 2003). The challenges of the digital era and the archives are diverse. In the last few years citizen humanities as public engagement and even as scientific citizenship is increasingly presented as an answer to this question. But what are the methodological implications when new forms of dialogue change the patterns of interaction with the public? This paper discuss possible impacts of the "participatory turn" on the relation between concepts like oral history, intangible heritage and vernacular storytelling.