Cultural AI Lab

A collaboration between the KNAW Humanities Cluster and CWI, working hand-in-hand with leading industry and societal partners including the KB Nationale Bibliotheek, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and the Rijksmuseum.

De Boelelaan 1105 + Science Park 900, 1098 XH Amsterdam

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The Cultural AI Lab centers its research on core themes at the intersection of AI and digital heritage, focusing on: automatically analyzing and enriching collection data, evaluating and improving digital discourse in public debates, supporting data-driven journalism, and making collection bias and polyvocality explicit.

 

To drive these advancements, the lab leverages key technical AI components, focusing primarily on:

 

  • Knowledge Representation & Reasoning
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Machine Learning

 

With a commitment to socially aware, explainable, and responsible AI systems.

Sustainable Development Goals

About the lab

The Cultural AI Lab is dedicated to bridging the gap between technical AI research and humanistic, cultural heritage practice.

 

The lab’s mission and vision are to study, design, and develop socio-technological AI systems that understand and accommodate the subtle, subjective complexities of human culture. By leveraging knowledge representation & reasoning, natural language processing, and machine learning, the lab aims to build AI technologies that are optimized for cultural and ethical values, address data and collection bias, and keep users in control.

 

The impact of the lab lies in accelerating a comprehensive sociotechnical transition across the cultural sector. This is achieved by validating breakthroughs through embedded research directly within key cultural institutions, such as the KB Nationale Bibliotheek, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and the Rijksmuseum, while embedding socially aware, explainable, and responsible AI frameworks to ensure transparency, polyvocality, and trust across the heritage ecosystem.

Research projects

AI:CULT (Culturally Aware AI) Focuses on automatically analyzing and enriching object descriptions in museum collections using transparent AI tools that keep human users in control.

 

SABIO (SociAl BIas Observatory)Focuses on identifying, mapping, and making explicit collection biases and colonial terminology across digital heritage archives without overwriting historical data.

BETTER-Mods (Better Informing Citizens about Current Debates) Aims to analyze contemporary press and social media debates to develop digital tools that evaluate and improve the quality of online public discussions.

 

All the projects are available here.

Publications

Cultural AI Lab

2025

Daniil, S.; Slokom, M.; Cuper, M.; Liem, C. C. S.; Ossenbruggen, J.; Hollink, L.

On the challenges of studying bias in Recommender Systems: The effect of data characteristics and algorithm configuration Journal Article

In: Information Retrieval Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 3–27, 2025.

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Boer, V.; Shoilee, S. B. A.

Linked Open Data for Cultural Heritage Book Section

In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2025.

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Shoilee, S. B. A.; Boer, V.; Ossenbruggen, J.

A Framework for Evaluating Entity Alignment Impact on Downstream Knowledge Discovery Proceedings Article

In: Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2024), pp. 209–225, Springer, Cham, 2025.

Links | BibTeX

Kom, C.

www.colonialcollections.nl: Koloniaal erfgoed samengebracht Journal Article

In: Tijdschrift Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, no. 1, pp. 11, 2025.

Links | BibTeX

2024

Boer, V.; Stork, L.

Hybrid Intelligence for Digital Humanities Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference Series on Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence (HHAI 2024), Malm, 2024.

BibTeX

Nesterov, A.; Hollink, L.; Ossenbruggen, J.

How contentious terms about people and cultures are used in Linked Open Data Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024 (WWW '24), Singapore, 2024.

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Vrijenhoek, S.; Daniil, S.; Sandel, J. J.; Hollink, L.

Diversity of what? On the different conceptualizations of diversity in recommender systems Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '24), pp. 573–584, 2024.

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Münster, S.; Maiwald, F.; Lenardo, I.; Henriksson, J.; Isaac, A.; Graf, M. M.; Beck, C.; Oomen, J.

Artificial Intelligence for Digital Heritage Innovation: Setting up a R&D Agenda for Europe Journal Article

In: Heritage, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 794–816, 2024.

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Ordelman, R.; Noordegraaf, J.; Gorp, J.; Wigham, M.; Deure, M. J.

CLARIAH Media Suite: from 2014 to 2024 in a series of short stories Miscellaneous

2024.

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Bocyte, R.; Oomen, J.; Hazejager, K.; Libot, C.

The media sector on its AI journey Technical Report

Sound and Vision / Cultural AI Lab 2024.

BibTeX

Kom, C.; Vogelmann, V.

Against Opacity: Improving Digital Accessibility of Cultural Heritage from Colonial Contexts in the Netherlands Proceedings Article

In: ICOM COMCOL Taiwan Conference Proceedings, pp. 93–101, 2024.

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Franke, I. F.; Conte, S. D.; Libbi, C. A.; Boer, V.; Hartmann, T.

A Polyvocal Approach to Virtual Heritage: An Immersive Case Study Journal Article

In: ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, vol. 17, no. 3, 2024.

Links | BibTeX

2023

Ordelman, R.; van Gorp, J.; Sanders, W.; Wigham, M.; Klein, R.; Blom, J.; Melder, W.; de Donk, M.; Wassenaar, J.; Sträter, F.; Boer, V.; Olesen, C.; van der Deure, M. J.; Karrouche, N.; Keijzer, J.; Ozgen-Havekotte, A.; Badenoch, A.; Phipps, M.; Noordegraaf, J.

Towards 'Stakeholder Readiness' in the CLARIAH Media Suite: Future-Proofing an Audio-Visual Research Infrastructure Proceedings Article

In: DHBenelux 2023, Brussels, Belgium, 2023.

BibTeX

Boer, V.

Knowledge Graphs for Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanities Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Analysis, Understanding and Promotion of Heritage Contents (SUMAC '23), 2023.

BibTeX

Kesäniemi, J.; Schlögl, M.; Tuominen, J.; Boer, V.; Sugimoto, G.

Towards Reusable Aggregated Biographical Research Data: Provenance and Versioning in the InTaVia Knowledge Graph Proceedings Article

In: Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (DHNB 2023), 2023.

BibTeX

Schlögl, M.; Kesäniemi, J.; Tuominen, J.; Boer, V.; Sugimoto, G.; Ebel, C.

Dos and Don'ts of Building a Pan-European Biographical Knowledge Graph: Statistical Analysis of the InTaVia-Platform Proceedings Article

In: Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Seventh Conference (DHNB 2023), Book of Abstracts, pp. 106, University of Oslo Library, Oslo, Norway, 2023.

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Mager, T.; Khademi, S.; Siebes, R.; Gemert, J.; Boer, V.; Löffler, B.; Hein, C.

Computer Vision and Architectural History at Eye Level: Mixed Methods for Linking Research in the Humanities and in Information Technology (ArchiMediaL) Book Section

In: Mixing Methods, pp. 125–144, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2023.

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Shoilee, S. B. A.; Boer, V.; Ossenbruggen, J.

Polyvocal Knowledge Modelling for Ethnographic Heritage Object Provenance Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Semantic Systems (SEMANTICS 2023), pp. 127–143, IOS Press, 2023.

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Daniil, S.; Cuper, M.; Liem, C. C. S.; Ossenbruggen, J.; Hollink, L.

Reproducing popularity bias in recommendation: the effect of evaluation strategies Journal Article

In: ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems, vol. 2, no. 1, 2023.

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Nesterov, A.; Hollink, L.; Erp, M.; Ossenbruggen, J.

A Knowledge Graph of Contentious Terminology for Inclusive Representation of Cultural Heritage Proceedings Article

In: European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2023), pp. 502–519, Springer, Cham, 2023.

Links | BibTeX

2022

Reimat, I.; Mei, Y.; Alexiou, E.; Jansen, J.; Li, J.; Subramanyam, S.; Viola, I.; Oomen, J.; Cesar, P.

Mediascape XR: A Cultural Heritage Experience in Social VR Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 30th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (MM '22), pp. 6955–6957, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2022.

Links | BibTeX

Sanders, W.; Ordelman, R.; Wigham, M.; Klein, R.; Gorp, J.; Noordegraaf, J.

Developing Data Stories as Enhanced Publications in Digital Humanities Proceedings Article

In: DH Benelux 2022, pp. 1–14, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, 2022.

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Sartini, B.; Nesterov, A.; Libbi, C. A.; Brate, R.; Alam, S. B.; Daniil, S.

Multivocal Exhibition: a user-centric application to explore symbolic interpretations of artefacts from different cultural perspectives Proceedings Article

In: ExICE-Extended Intelligence for Cultural Engagement Conference, 2022.

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Alam, M.; Boer, V.; Daga, E.; Erp, M.; Hyvönen, E.; Meroño-Peñuela, A.

Editorial of the Special issue on Cultural heritage and Semantic Web Journal Article

In: Semantic Web, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 155–158, 2022.

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Daniil, S.; Cuper, M.; Liem, C. C. S.; Ossenbruggen, J.; Hollink, L.

Hidden Author Bias in Book Recommendation Journal Article

In: arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.00371, 2022.

BibTeX

Waterschoot, C.; Bosch, A.; Hemel, E.

Extracting and Analyzing Cultural Phenomena in Dutch Online Communication Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2022), pp. 6715–6725, International Committee on Computational Linguistics, 2022.

BibTeX

Shoilee, S. B. A.

Knowledge Discovery for Provenance Research on Colonial Heritage Objects Proceedings Article

In: Doctoral Consortium at International Semantic Web Conference 2022 (ISWC-DC 2022), 2022.

BibTeX

2021

Hollink, L.; Erp, M.; Kleppe, M.

Cultural AI Lab: engaging AI and cultural heritage Proceedings Article

In: LIBER 2021 Conference, 2021.

BibTeX

Brate, R.; Nesterov, A.; Vogelmann, V.; Ossenbruggen, J.; Hollink, L.; Erp, M.

Capturing contentiousness: Constructing the contentious terms in context corpus Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 11th Knowledge Capture Conference (K-CAP '21), 2021.

Links | BibTeX

Erp, M.; Boer, V.

A Polyvocal and Contextualised Semantic Web Proceedings Article

In: European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2021), pp. 506–512, Springer, Cham, 2021.

BibTeX

Waterschoot, C.; Bosch, A.; Hemel, E.

Dutch Online Communication and Cultural Heritage Proceedings Article

In: 3rd Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge (LDK 2021), pp. 39:1–39:9, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum f, Dagstuhl, Germany, 2021.

BibTeX

People

Partners

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is the national research institute in the Netherlands focusing on fundamental, high-impact research in mathematics and computer science.

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid) is one of the world’s largest audiovisual archives, preserving media culture and running an interactive media museum.

KB is the National Library of the Netherlands, responsible for preserving the national written heritage and collecting Dutch books, newspapers, and digital publications.

KNAW Humanities Cluster is a collective of research institutes dedicated to innovative, interdisciplinary humanities research, digital infrastructure, and data management.

 

Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch art and history, housing a world-renowned collection spanning 800 years.

Wereldmuseum is a group of ethnographic museums in the Netherlands showcasing global cultural heritage, art, and material culture across human history.

 

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) is a major research university recognized for its interdisciplinary work across technology, AI, human-centric computing, and humanities.

 

University of Amsterdam (UvA) is a leading public research university known for strong research programs in artificial intelligence, digital humanities, and computer science.

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