Introduction: digital approaches to inclusion and participation in cultural heritage

This chapter introduces the recent scholarly and practical developments at the intersection of cultural heritage, digital technologies, and social innovation. It also serves as an introduction to this book, which brings together best examples and practices of digital and interactive approaches and platforms from a number of projects based in European countries to foster social inclusion and participation in heritage and culture. It will propose some common threads emerging from all the chapters that will underpin and support the establishment of more inclusive heritage practices and institutions through the pursuit of digital innovation. After having presented each individual chapter and its main topic, this chapter will also propose some open questions built around ongoing challenges related to the mediation between potentially diverging actors, the politics of technology design, and the need for reflexivity, hoping to foster further discussions on these themes.