We are pleased to invite you to a new FRH Talk dedicated to the intersection between technology and culture, in which we will take a closer look at the role of digital humanities in cultural heritage documentation, accessibility and preservation. New technologies, such as digital mapping, 3D scanning, and data visualisation tools, are just some of the revolutionary elements introduced by this emerging field of research, allowing us to document and preserve religious objects in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago.
The session will focus on a particular example: the Baptisteria Sacra Index: An Iconographical Index of Baptismal Fonts (BSI), a pioneering in-progress digital humanities project at the University of Toronto, hosted by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada which was launched this year.
BSI documents baptismal fonts from the early Christian period to the seventeenth century from across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and countries in Central and North America (ninety-six countries) providing extensive data, inscriptions, images of fonts and settings, geographical and historical information. Making this information openly accessible online, the Baptisteria Sacra Index enhances scholarly research, safeguards little-known community works for long-term preservation, and brings this cultural heritage to audiences worldwide.
Our guest speaker, Harriet Sonne de Torrens, who is the founder of BSI and co-director with Miguel A. Torrens, will offer us a glimpse into the making and launching of this extensive online database, and explain in more detail its functioning, its relevance in the field of digital humanities, and how the study of these cultural vessels serve as venerated objects and living witnesses to the past within communities’ cultural history. Scholarship: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0840-9877
The event will take place on Tuesday, 14 October 2025 from 17:00 to 18:00 CET. Join us for this fascinating exploration of digital humanities’ role in religious heritage preservation!
About the speaker
Harriet Sonne de Torrens
Harriet Sonne de Torrens is an Academic Librarian, Visual Resource Specialist, Medievalist and Art Historian who manages the Visual Resource Library in the Department of Visual Studies and the UTM Library (University of Toronto). She also manages the Collection Development in Cinema, Art History and Visual Studies at the UTM. Sonne de Torrens specialises in 12th-13th century iconography, Baltic and Scandinavia studies, and the historical production of baptismal fonts.
She is the founder and co-director of the digital humanities project Baptisteria Sacra Index: An Iconographical Index of Baptismal Fonts from the Early Christian to the 17th century, see https://bsi.dhn.utoronto.ca/ and https://eadh.org/projects/baptisteria-sacra-index
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