Are you a humanities student (3rd-year BA, MA, or PhD) using digital methods in your research or thesis? And would you like to present you work to fellow students? We’d love to hear from you!

We – Finn Pietrass and Thomas Rozendaal, student ambassadors at the Centre for Digital Humanities at Utrecht University – are organising a student colloquium: The Digital Humanities Dialogue for Students (date TBA). This event is designed to give students insight into how digital methods can be applied across different humanities disciplines, and to inspire students to explore these approaches themselves.

We are looking for 2 to 3 student speakers from the Faculties of Humanities who are interested in sharing their experiences with digital methods in their studies or a research project. Presentations will be short (approximately 15 minutes) and aimed at a broad student audience. No prior presentation experience is required.

Why participate?

• Present your research in a supportive, low-pressure environment

• Gain experience as a speaker in an academic context

• Discuss and exchange ideas with like-minded individuals

Sign up

Interested in participating or want to learn more? Get in touch via cdh@uu.nl. The deadline to sign up as a speaker is 12 April. We’d be happy to hear from you!

The post Call for student speakers: Share your digital humanities project appeared first on Centre for Digital Humanities.

The Utrecht University focus area Applied Data Science (ADS) invites applications for small research grants of €5000 each. These grants support projects that apply data science methods in research fields where these techniques are not yet applied.

Projects must be approved by a UU Special Interest Group (SIG) and must include applicants from more than one faculty.

Deadline to apply is 22 November 2025.

The post ADS Research Grants Call appeared first on Centre for Digital Humanities.

If your research requires the development of advanced research software, and if you think the research community in general would benefit from that software, then this call is for you.

The Netherlands eScience Center supports researchers from all disciplines by creating tailor-made research software: digital tools that contribute to answering research questions by creating and/or analysing research data and research results.

This call for proposals supports research that has an urgent methodological research challenge: a concrete research problem that requires a digital solution in the form of a software tool (code, scripts, packages, libraries, programmes, etc).

On 4 September there is an online information event to inform interested applicants about the eScience Center and the specifics of this call.

The call is now open, and closes on 13 October at 14:00 hours.

The post Open eScience call – Projects in need of research software appeared first on Centre for Digital Humanities.

Do you have ideas, insights, or experiences related to research software that you would like to share with the NL-RSE community? The call for sessions is open until 5 September.

On 25 November, researchers, research software engineers, policymakers, and community leaders will gather in Delft for the National Research Software Day 2025. Together, they will explore research software tools, discuss trends and policies, and help shape the NL-RSE community.

They welcome creative session proposals that inspire and connect the community. You can submit your proposal for a parallel or unconference session until 5 September 2025.

The National Research Software Day 2025 is a joint initiative by NL-RSE, TU Delft, and the National Coordination Point Research Data Management (LCRDM), with support from Open Science NL. The event will take place at Lijm & Cultuur in Delft.

About NL-RSE

NL-RSE brings together the community of people writing and contributing to research software from Dutch universities, knowledge institutes, companies and other organizations to share knowledge, to organize meetings, and raise awareness for the scientific recognition of research software.

Read more

The post Call for sessions – National Research Software Day 2025 appeared first on Centre for Digital Humanities.

In an open letter to the Executive University Board of Utrecht University, Prof. dr. Albert Meijer (Professor of Public Innovation, UU) & Prof. dr. José van Dijck (Professor of Media and Digital Society, UU) are calling for a transformation to digital autonomy. They express their “concern about Utrecht University’s increasing reliance on services from Big Tech companies (particularly Microsoft, Google, Amazon) for our research, teaching and administrative activities”.

If you support this call, you can contribute by signing the local petition (also possible anonymously), preferably before 16 April.

With this open letter we call upon you to change course, thereby freeing our university from this heavy reliance on services from these companies and contributing to greater technological self-determination, resilience and public innovation for and with universities across Europe.”

Albert Meijer & José van Dijck

More info

Prof. dr. José van Dijck is a member of the CDH Advisory board. She has been interviewed on this topic by the Dutch newspaper NRC (Onderzoekers kiezen voor een alternatieve cloud: ‘Ik wil zelf kunnen kiezen met wie ik mijn bestanden deel’, 31 December 2024). For Dutch newspaper Trouw, she wrote an opinion article together with Prof. dr. Albert Meijer: Opinie: Universiteit, maak je los van Big Tech (23 February 2025).

CDH affiliate dr. Fabian Ferrari will be one of the speakers at Studium Generale’s hybrid event Can we stop the techbro’s takeover? on 17 April 2025. His postdoctoral research on AI governance (2022-2024) was supported by a Spinoza-funded project led by Prof. dr. José van Dijck.

The post Open letter & petition: Call for digital autonomy UU appeared first on Centre for Digital Humanities.

The ‘Untangling FAIR Implementation in the Dutch Social Sciences and Humanities’ project has launched a survey to explore how FAIR data principles align with Research Data Management (RDM) policies and the coordination of FAIR-enabling services in Social Sciences & Humanites (SSH) research. The survey is open to data stewards, curators, RDM coordinators, managers, senior decision-makers, and policy professionals.

Please fill in the 15-minute survey by clicking the button below and spread the word!

Project aim

The ‘Untangling FAIR Implementation in the Dutch Social Sciences and Humanities’ project aims to get to grips with the governance and processes implemented for FAIR data in the SSH-domain at an institutional level, and to map them to the technical facilities available.

In short, the project tries to answer the question ‘who is responsible for making FAIR implementation choices at which level of your organisation, at which point in the research data life cycle, and with which infrastructure at their disposal?’. The project is currently collecting experiences and insights of FAIR implementation in Dutch research and cultural heritage institutions, and universities/faculties.

This project is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through the Thematic Digital Competence Center for Social Sciences and Humanities (TDCC-SSH). It is a collaboration between ODISSEI, DANS, and Erasmus University Rotterdam. Utrecht University’s Coosje Veldkamp is part of the Advisory Board for this project.

FAIR

FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. The FAIR principles are a set of instructions formulated to maximize the use of data and other digital objects such as code and software. Their aim is to facilitate, encourage and guide researchers towards making their data easily findable and accessible, in line with Open Science guidelines. All the while ensuring that the data they make available is easily understood and well documented with the ultimate goal to make scientific data as reusable as possible.

More information

For more information about the survey, please contact Bora Lushaj (EUR).

The post Survey: FAIR data principles in RDM & SSH appeared first on Centre for Digital Humanities.

Data School has published a call to action for Impact Projects: support for impact-focused research projects in the humanities with societal partners. Impact Project vouchers are available with a fixed individual value of €8,000.

For the past 10 years, Data School has been at the forefront of researching the impact of AI in society. Working across disciplines and in close collaboration with external partners we conduct research around two main research pillars: Responsible Data Practices & AI and Media Policy and Public Debates. We are committed to producing impactful research that informs policy and practice in public sector and media industries.

As one of the dedicated focus areas of Utrecht University’s Impact Plans, Data School will further advance its transdisciplinary research agenda with the following goals:

• Involving more academic staff in projects with external partners to ensure quality assurance and scientifically translate results into publications.
• Expanding and strengthening relationships with the media industry, such as news media and public broadcasters, as well as creative agencies.
• Improving the visibility of activities and impact both within and outside the University.

Impact Project vouchers

At the Faculty of Humanities, Impact Project vouchers are available to encourage researchers at Utrecht University to collaborate across disciplines and with relevant societal partners in the professional field. Each voucher has a fixed individual value of €8,000.

External partner organizations should contribute with their own funding to match the amount provided by the university. The main goal is to strengthen ties between our research and the needs of practitioners in society.

Research pillars

Utrecht University is dedicated to enhancing the impact of its research through transdisciplinary projects with societal partners. At the forefront of this initiative is the Data School, which drives this agenda through two key pillars for inter- and transdisciplinary research:

1. Public Debates & Media Policy
   How do media shape public discussions about societal issues (e.g., climate crisis, migration, disinformation, AI)? How can we help media organisations to develop efficient strategies addressing profound social and political challenges (e.g., representation, inclusion, diversity)? What role can emerging technologies play here?
   
2. Responsible Data Practices & AI
   How can we promote ethical and responsible data practices in the development and deployment of AI technologies? How can societally responsible organisations ensure data privacy, fairness, transparency, and accountability in data- and AI systems? How can organisations address biases in AI, and develop frameworks for responsible data governance?

Submission

We would like to invite you to send your inter- and transdisciplinary project ideas that could fit within one of these pillars.

The submission deadlines for propasals for Impact Projects are:

• First submission deadline: 11 October 2024
• Second submission deadline: 11 March 2025

More info

You can find more information about the Impact Projects on dataschool.nl/impact.

For any questions or comments regarding Impact Projects, please contact dr. Dennis Nguyen directly at d.nguyen1@uu.nl.

The research training group “Literature and the Public Sphere in Differentiated Contemporary Cultures” at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg, funded by the German Research Foundation, is offering 11 Doctoral Positions (m/f/d) (65%, E-13 TV-L) for a duration of three years respectively, starting 1 October 2025. Extensions for the doctoral positions (6 months) are possible.

The interdisciplinary Research Training Group (RTG) aims to analyze contemporary literatures since 1945 in different public and cultural contexts. It examines the conditions that enable and influence different literatures in the public sphere, thereby focusing on their cultural specificities, potentials and functions. It uses a broad concept of literature, including the digitalization of society and its consequences, socio-cultural political and economic contexts, (inter-)mediality and media competition, institutional conditions, the literary industry and literary life as objects of enquiry.

The RTG considers literatures from different cultural and language areas, including ‘small literatures’ and minority cultures on different continents. Accordingly, the RTG investigates the interactions between literatures and public spheres in a differentiated manner. Adopting a comparative and transnational perspective, the RTG takes into account digital, praxeological, cultural studies and philological methods and supports research projects from social, media, material, ethical or economic studies.

Applying

If your field of study was Digital Humanities, Book Studies, (Cultural) Sociology, Media/Communication Studies, Romance Studies, Comparative Literature, American Studies, English Studies or German Studies and you have a suitable project idea, please apply by 1 May 2025.

More info

You can find more information about these doctoral positions and the application procedure on the website of the FAU.

Do you use a reference manager, such as Zotero or Endnote? The University Library would like to help you better use and manage references. That is why we would like to know which tools you use.

Please complete the short survey, so we can learn how to better help you use these tools effectively.

Go to the survey (completion time 2-3 minutes)

Are you a researcher from the Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences? The ATRIUM Project needs your participation in their Researcher Survey! 

The goal of ATRIUM (Advancing fronTier Research In the arts and hUManities) is to bridge leading research infrastructures in arts and humanities (DARIAH), archaeology (ARIADNE), languages (CLARIN), and open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities (OPERAS).

They are conducting a survey to assess the skills needed for the use of research services and tools, namely the ones available in the ATRIUM Catalogue. Some require very specific skills, while some are easier to use. Please participate in this survey and share your training needs!

They will use your valuable feedback to build the ATRIUM Curriculum according to the research community’s needs.

Take the short survey now!

More info can be found on the ATRIUM website.: https://atrium-research.eu/news/survey-participants-needed/ 

Have you ever used I-Analyzer? Are there certain features or corpora you would like to see in I-Analyzer? This user survey is your chance to share your ideas with the scientific developers from the Research Software Lab of the Centre for Digital Humanities. All of the questions in this survey are optional, and your responses are completely anonymous.

About I-Analyzer

Text and data mining (TDM) simplifies the exploration of large datasets (or corpora), making it easier to identify patterns and relationships. TDM tool I-Analyzer is geared toward the pre-analysis phase, allowing researchers and students to conduct full-text searches to quickly locate relevant documents. Users can also apply a multitude of filters, create visualisations to understand broader trends within a corpus, and export selected data subsets for further in-depth analysis in other software programs. 

I-Analyzer is open-source software, freely available and primarily intended for academic research and higher education. The tool is continuously developed and maintained in-house at the Research Software Lab of UU’s Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH). Work on I-Analyzer began in 2017 to address the increasing demand, particularly among Social Sciences and Humanities researchers, for an accessible tool to facilitate preliminary text analysis. 

Survey results

The results of the survey help us to determine what to focus on in future projects. We may also point to the results of the survey in funding applications for projects. By filling in your wishes in this survey, you are helping to make those a reality. Thank you very much in advance.

Fill out the I-Analyzer user survey