Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon #DH­H23 gathered students and researchers of humanities, social sciences, and computer science in May and June at the University of Helsinki. During a week and a half of intensive multi-disciplinary work, the groups applied digital methods to a variety of datasets, with the goal of solving research questions in the following themes:

• Epistolary exchanges
• Interactional dynamics of online discussion
• Early modern images
• Political polarisation in the parliament

The event was organised as an international summer school by the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, with a financial support by CLARIN ERIC – European Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure, and DARIAH ERIC – the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, and HIIT – Helsinki Institute for Information Technology.

The Hackathon participants were from 13 different countries. 60 people participated including 48 participants in thematic groups.

Overall organisers (4 persons)

• Mikko Tolonen, professor in computational history at the University of Helsinki
• Eetu Mäkelä, associate professor in human sciences – computing interaction at the University of Helsinki
• Jukka Suomela, associate professor in distributed algorithms, logic and complexity at Aalto University
• Jouni Tuominen, university researcher at HSSH, University of Helsinki; staff scientist at Aalto University

Team leaders and consultants (15 persons)

• Petri Leskinen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Caitlin Burge, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Luxembourg
• Ilona Pikkanen, Research Manager, Finnish Literature Society
• Pihla Toivanen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Ümit Bedretdin, Grant Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Yann Ryan, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Iiro Tiihonen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Ville Vaara, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Risto Turunen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Tampere
• Jani Marjanen, University Lecturer, University of Helsinki
• Bojan Evkoski, Researcher, Jozef Stefan Institute
• Narges Azizi Fard, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Emilia Lounela, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Laura Lehmuskoski, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Dayei Oh, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki

Feeza Vasudeva, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki

Participating thematic groups

1. Epistolary participation

The Epistolary participation group focused on the connections between letter-writing and the rise of literacy within the 19th century in Finland. By analysing two different datasets, CoCo dataset consisting of letter metadata from the period of the Grand Duchy of Finland, as well as Translocalis, a dataset made of Finnish newspapers’ readers’ letters from 1775 to 1885, the group discussed occupational sectors, epistolary literacy, travel patterns, as well as analysed the importance of bias in the datasets themselves.

View the poster here.

Members (12 persons): Alie Tacq, Anna Moschitta, Efthymios Kokordelis, Elias Mucha, Imama Alishova, Koldo Garai, Lilli Peura, Michele Stefani, Olof Falk, Ruxandra Gidei, Tetiana Shyshkina, Ville-Pekka Kääriäinen

2. Interactional dynamics of online discussion

The Interactional dynamics of online discussion group explored the ways in which a specific group of people interacts with one another as well as the outside world – focusing on a dataset of discussions on a forum of incels (involuntary celibate; people “who feel unable to find a sexual or romantic partner and express hatred towards those they blame for this”). They strived to find out how the members talk to each other, group themselves together, and the key differences between themselves and others they deem unfit to be part of the closed group.

View the poster here or visit the GitHub repository.

Members (10 persons): Selenia Anastasi, Yan Asadchy, Nina Eckertz, Annika Grützner-Zahn, Nina Jokirinne, Milja Ketoja, Kerstin Marki, Harri Haralds Matulis, Siyi Wang, Laura Chilla

3. Early modern images

The Early modern images group was the only one to focus on, as the name implies, images – particularly on the evolution of scientific illustrations during the 18th century. By analysing over 100,000 pages of images from the ECCO scientific collection, they showed the different ways in which particular genres of illustrations were used, while also noting how much the practice of illustrating evolved overtime and was closely tied with technological, social and cultural development.

View the poster here or visit the GitHub repository.

Members (10 persons): Mourad Boumlik, Prolet Decheva, Lenka Kalvodová, Linda Nurmi, Ánh Dương Nguyễn, Magdalena Piotrowska-Grot, Telma Peura, Reetta Sippola, Aleksi Suuronen, Ari Vesalainen

4. Political polarisation in the parliament

The Political polarisation in the parliament group strove to explore the phenomenon of political division by discovering the differences in different countries’ parliamentary speeches. Using the ParlaMint corpora of parliamentary debates, with a specific focus on Great Britain, Hungary, Slovenia and Ukraine, they analysed how different topics of debate are affected by polarisation, its temporal changes, as well as how well these kinds of trends can be measured computationally.

View the poster here or visit the GitHub repository.

Members (12 persons): Anna Krvvenko, Ari-Heikki Rintaniemi, David Bordon, Ekaterina Glazacheva, Katia Meden, Mark Mets, Nikoletta Jablonczay, Paul Pope, Pontus Hedlund, Topi Ranta, Vadym Kuzyak, Vid Klopčič

Feedback

According to the feedback form, participants had a great time working together on an interdisciplinary project with people from all over the world and of differing backgrounds. Moving forward, it is apparent that still greater attention needs to be devoted to resolving organisational matters such as communication about different roles in groups and ensuring alignment among individuals regarding different aspects of group work (for example, clearer instructions with respect to division of labour). It is important to note that the Hackathon is an event that is constantly improving largely thanks to the feedback we get from participants, so every positive note as well as constructive criticism are all taken into consideration.

More information about #DHH23 can be found on Instagram and Twitter!

It was a busy week Graz, Austria, from 9th-15th July as the international community of Digital Humanities scholars gathered at the University of Graz and Messe Congress Graz for the 2023 Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) Annual Conference #DH2023! The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Collaboration as Opportunity’, and we left feeling inspired by all the potential opportunities for collaboration and research outlined throughout the week.

Several pre-conference workshops took place on 9th, 10th, and 11th July, including an Intavia workshop entitled “Smashing the Silos! The Future of Cultural Heritage Information and Visualization” which was designed to reflect on novel developments and challenges in the field of cultural heritage information and visualization. An OpenMethods workshop entitled “Amplifying Unheard Voices in Digital Humanities: an OpenMethods Edit-a-thon” took place which invited Digital Humanists to explore the OpenMethods metablog as an innovative publication forum to strengthen the representation of traditionally underrepresented languages.

Our President of the Board of Directors, Toma Tasovac, and Anne Baillot fulfilled their roles as Programme Committee Chairs of #DH2023, and DARIAH shared a booth with CLARIN-ERIC in the breakout space, where we discussed what role DARIAH plays as European Research Infrastructure Consortium for the DH community, how to join its activities or how to use its services, such as DARIAH Campus and SSH Open Marketplace with conference participants. 

The opening keynote address was delivered by Professor Sarah Kenderdine (DARIAH Scientific Board member) and was entitled “Two-Fold Revolutions: Computational Museology in the Age of Experience” and covered panoramas and stereoscopic photos, Shaw’s virtual museum (1989), and on to the future with digital twins, text-to-image generators, and deepfakes.

DARIAH was well represented across the week: DARIAH Director Agiatis Bernardou chaired and presented several sessions, former Directors Jennifer Edmond and Frank Fischer also spoke, chaired and presented posters during the Thursday evening poster session, while the Bibliographical Data DARIAH-EU Working Group presented their recent findings in a panel entitled “Fostering Collaboration to Enable Bibliodata-driven Research in the Humanities”. Training and Education Officer Vicky Garnett chaired the Thursday morning panel on “Collaboration”, while European Project Officer Laure Barbot led the Tuesday pre-conference workshop entitled “Creating a DH workflow in the SSH Open Marketplace”.

The closing keynote address was delivered by Claire Fernandez (European Digital Rights) “Contesting Power in the Digital Age: The Role of Civil Society in Europe” and prompted a stimulating discussion during the Q&A before the conference’s closing remarks, in which the fantastic organising committee, hosts, and volunteers who made #DH2023 possible were thanked with a standing ovation.

Despite the busyness of the week, we were fortunate to find time for the Conference Banquet at Schlossberg which treated us to some beautiful sunset views of Graz, and we also enjoyed delicious vegan ice cream to counteract the high temperatures throughout the week. We left the week with an immensely positive sense of the opportunities afforded by collaboration and communication between DH scholars and beyond, and are already looking forward to #DH2024, which will be held in Washington DC, with the theme of “Reinvention & Responsibility” from August 6-9th, 2024! 

The DARIAH-EU Annual Event 2023 took place in Budapest, Hungary, from June 6^th – 9^th 2023. The topic of this year’s event was Cultural Heritage Data as Humanities Research Data? This was a busy annual event, as we welcomed more than 200 participants from over 30 countries around the world. The event was held in-person with additional streaming of the main plenary room across all three days.

Theme of Cultural Heritage Data as Humanities Research Data?

Collections in libraries, archives and museums have been at the heart of humanities research for centuries. However, with the current focus on data-driven research, data management plans and the research data lifecycle, in what ways do we need to think differently about cultural heritage collections as data? Inspired by the proclamation “cultural heritage data is humanities research data”, this year’s DARIAH Annual Event explored what this means in practice. What does it mean for cultural heritage institutions to provide access to their ‘collections as data’? Do we need to think of different workflows for digitised and born-digital datasets? Can we think of a humanities research data continuum? These are only some of the questions that we discussed, debated, and answered at the 2023 DARIAH Annual Event.

Three themes were proposed for the 2023 Annual Event to inspire submissions:

1. Sustainable workflows for data management and curation

2. Imagining experimental data spaces for cultural heritage

3. Advancing digital methods for the analysis of cultural heritage

Programme

The 2023 event kicked off with meetings of DARIAH bodies, followed by three conference days with panels, papers, keynote speeches, performances and poster sessions. Specifically, the programme of the event consisted of:

• A keynote lecture and keynote panel on the event’s theme: an opening lecture by Thomas Padilla (Deputy Director at Archiving and Data Services of the Internet Archive) entitled ‘A Mutualistic View of AI in the Library or a Continuation of Craft’ and a closing keynote panel entitled ‘DARIAH Data Spaces Dialogue: Imagining Experimental Data Spaces for Analysis of Cultural Heritage Using Digital Methods’, chaired by DARIAH Director Sally Chambers. 
• Paper sessions on topics including ‘Exploring Cultural Heritage in Research: Case Studies in Genealogy, Gaming, Language, and Historical Data’, ‘Imagining Data Spaces’, and ‘Data quality and data management for CH in the context of open science’
• Panel session on the topic ‘The digital research axis at C2DH: sustainable workflows, data usability, and multi-layered publishing’. 
• Poster sessions each afternoon
• Two country-specific showcases: ‘DARIAH Hungary Showcase: Road to DARIAH’ and ‘Dariah.lab Poland – Together for Cultural Heritage’
• Plenary sessions
• Internal meetings of several DARIAH organisational bodies including the Scientific Board.

Over the three days, the participants listened and contributed to many exciting topics such as data quality and management for Cultural Heritage, new ways of accessing DH data for GLAM or Exploring Digital Heritage: Innovations in Digitization and Data Services.

A key take home message from this year’s event was the importance of collaboration across cultural institutions in order to best facilitate the integration of cultural heritage data and the management of humanities data.  

Find out more

Get a glimpse of the 2023 Annual Event in this recap film:

All three days were streamed in full and are available via the ELTE Youtube channel (Day One, Day Two, and Day Three)

The Book of Abstracts is available in the Zenodo community for the Annual Event 2023.