Our Challenge

Do you want to uncover what censorship tried to erase from our historical memory — and use AI to do it? This challenge invites you to explore a powerful and largely invisible legacy: the censorship marks on radio scripts from Francoist Spain. Right now, the libraries at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona are carrying out a major digitization effort of documents from the Spanish Second Republic and Civil War. But there’s a critical problem — the handwritten censorship marks on radio scripts (crossed-out phrases, annotations, edits by fascist censors) are being lost in the process. How can we make these traces of repression visible again? How can AI help us recover the silenced layers of our cultural memory? In this project, you’ll work with real historical materials and help develop innovative tools that could finally solve a problem researchers have faced for over two years. You'll collaborate with archivists, technologists, and cultural researchers to explore how machine learning can detect, classify, and interpret visual traces of censorship — and you'll take part in a hands-on final sprint in Barcelona to showcase your ideas. A unique opportunity to combine critical thinking, technology, and historical justice. Are you in?