Representatives from DARIAH-EU were delighted to attend a two-day conference in University of Sarajevo on 5th-6th December 2024, organised by DARIAH-BiH, which featured the promotion of the DigiProHUMANE Project along with the opportunity to highlight the work of DARIAH-BiH in this area. The conference was organised as part of the DigiProHUMANE project, and was a valuable opportunity for DARIAH-EU to meet with our Bosnian colleagues, greet conference attendees, and share further opportunities for collaboration with the DARIAH-EU infrastructure.
After introductions by Professor Naris Pojskić, Vice-Rector for Research, DARIAH Director Sally Chambers introduced the DARIAH infrastructure more broadly in relation to the EOSC and ESFRI Roadmaps, while Community Engagement Officer Amelia McConville presented the Working Groups and opportunities for collaboration across funding calls and European Research Projects.
Presentations were delivered by representatives from the Sarajevo Historical Archive, the National and University Library, and the Institute of Ottoman Studies at the University of Sarajevo. The event also featured an exhibition of manuscript materials in the Hall of the Rectorate of the University of Sarajevo by the Czech artist František Matějovský: one of the pioneer personalities of the musical scene of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Bosnia & Herzegovina. There was also a book launch of a volume authored by the National Coordinator for Bosnia & Herzegovina, Professor Lana Šehović, and Professor Fatima Hadzić on Matějovský in the Bosnian language, the first of its kind, as well as a piano performance of a piece by the composer.
While in Sarajevo, there was also a visit to the Ministry of Civil Affairs after the conference for a meeting with the National Representative for Bosnia & Herzegovina, Suvad Džafić, where the great potential and future development of DARIAH-BiH over the coming years was discussed. As Bosnia and Herzegovina has been a full member of DARIAH since 2021, this visit marked an important step in illuminating the potential for future collaboration in the digital humanities landscape with DARIAH-BiH, cultural heritage in Bosnia, and across Working Groups, European Projects, and DARIAH events.
DARIAH representatives were especially grateful for the generous hosting by Jasmina Gradaščević-Pleh and Lana Šehović, and to PhD researcher Dalila Mirović, who kindly acted as interpreter for the parts of the conference that took place in the Bosnian language.
Connect with DARIAH-BiH social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
The PALOMERA Project (Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area) is a two-year project funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe program. The project’s goals are to understand why so few Open Access funder policies include books, and to provide actionable recommendations to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for OA books, with the overall objective of speeding up the transition to OA for books. Open Access Books are defined within the remit of the project as scholarly, peer-reviewed books including monographs, book chapters, edited collections, critical editions, and other long-form scholarly works.
As the project draws to a close at the end of 2024, on 28th October, project partners, associates and affiliates of PALOMERA gathered in ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to hear the outcomes and findings, with a deeper dive into the project recommendations, addressed to all relevant stakeholders (research funders and institutions, researchers, publishers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and national policymakers). In this context, DARIAH contributed in collaboration with Coimbra University (partner of the project) to elaborate the recommendations for the researchers, which strengthens our Open Access involvement.
The first day was opened by Oto Luthar of ZRC SAZU, who noted the far reaching implications of the project’s survey of Open Access book policies in the European Research Area (ERA), which is a cause to celebrate its successes: the project currently has the most comprehensive and up to date materials available to describe the OA book policy landscape in the ERA.
The project has resulted in a series of recommendations emerging out of its’ validation methodology, which drew on scientific coordination and PESTLE analysis framework to facilitate it. We also heard from a panel of international stakeholders who took to the stage to discuss the critical aspects of these recommendations, and brainstorm any potential challenges or problems in implementing them.
Victoria Tsoukala, the Open Science Policy Officer at European Commission, also tuned in to share her thoughts on the project recommendations. We also heard about the PALOMERA Knowledge Base and the OABooks Toolkit. Niels Stern of OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) closed the day by urging project partners and affiliates to remember that despite the project coming to an end, PALOMERA is a stepping stone: the shared level of knowledge that we are standing on, along with the strong consortium of 16 partners, bodes well for the future of open access in Europe.
Earlier this month, DARIAH was delighted to host the kick-off meeting for ATRIUM (Advancing Frontier Research in the Arts and Humanities) in Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, from 1st-2nd February. This four year project will exploit and strengthen complementarities between four leading European infrastructures: DARIAH (digital arts and humanities), ARIADNE (archaeology), CLARIN (languages) and OPERAS (social sciences), in order to improve workflows and access to the state-of-the-art services available to researchers across countries, languages, domains and media pertaining to archaeological research.
As ATRIUM brings together 17 partners and 12 affiliated entities across 12 countries, the launch event played host to over 60 guests from across Europe over the two days of planning and discussion. DARIAH Director Toma Tasovac introduced the project, situating it within the European Research landscape, before the various Work Packages were outlined over the following day and a half. ATRIUM will align itself with various initiatives such as the OSCARS Project, by providing a holistic framework for data access and organisation. Its workflows will be created using the SSH Open Marketplace templates, and interoperability with EOSC (the European Open Science Cloud) is a key priority for the services that ATRIUM will facilitate, by making them interoperable and ensuring the workflows are integrated.
On the second day, several breakout sessions were facilitated, where the plans and workflows for various Work Packages were planned and debated, including discussions about how best to support the project’s goals of improving metadata quality, developing training materials and services, and strengthening the ties between the infrastructures and partners involved.
One of ATRIUM’s goals is to facilitate the development and delivery of training for digital humanities researchers. One component of this will be to make a skills requirements assessment through surveys, desk research, interviews and currently available data from previous projects in order to develop a curriculum to support cross-disciplinary research, which will then be available on DARIAH-Campus.
DARIAH is delighted to announce the details of the upcoming Friday Frontiers Spring 2024 series! Registration is now open for all the sessions in this series.
The Friday Frontiers webinars run in two series, twice a year: Spring and Autumn/Winter. The webinars offer an insight into the broad scope of innovative work that is carried out within the Digital Arts and Humanities in Europe and beyond, while also offering introductions to new methodologies and opening up discussion around ethical, societal and sometimes moral issues within the practice of research in Digital Humanities itself.
The schedule for talks is below.
8th March 2024
Title: Diamond publication and Open Science at University of Liège
Speaker: Dr. Bernard Pochet, University of Liége, Belgium
This presentation will trace the evolution of Open Science at the University of Liège in the early 2000s, focusing on Open Access and the implementation of a Diamant Open Access journal publishing platform (PoPuPS) and an institutional repository (ORBi). The concept has evolved over time to take into account other principles of Open Science, culminating with the publication of an Open Science roadmap for the University of Liège. This presentation will explain how our concerns fit into the European framework, and the role of the library in driving developments and progress.
5th April 2024
Title: Historical Farm and People Registry in Iceland – Turning static list entries into network nodes.
Speaker: Pétur Húni Björnsson, University of Reykjavík
The aim of developing the Historical Farm and People Registry is to create a reliable infrastructure for research involving data on people and places in Iceland from 1703 to 1920. This has been done by (a) establishing a reliable historical farm registry, (b) mapping census data onto the farm registry, and (c) connecting people between censuses, and thereby transforming the static lists of the censuses into an interconnected network of nodes. This presentation will outline the aim and scope of the project, explain the development process and problems encountered on the way, and demonstrate a use case for the ‘final’ product.
3rd May 2024
Title: Trialling Witchcraft: Adapting public history to new heritage settings
Speakers: Dr Andrew Sneddon & Dr Victoria McCollum, University of Ulster
This talk will discuss the ongoing “The Islandmagee Witchcraft 1711 Digital and Creative Project” directed by Dr Andrew Sneddon (History) and Dr Victoria McCollum (Cinematic Arts) of Ulster University (Project website: w1711.org). This interdisciplinary project aims to take the last trial in Ireland under a witch act to new audiences using creative and digital technologies by producing: a new graphic novel; a video game; a bespoke animation; an interactive website; a play; a musical score and a Virtual Reality application. The talk will cover the challenges of this type of public history that deals with traumatic events in places with contested pasts, and how these can be overcome and hidden histories used to discuss wider issues of gender violence, othering, poverty and exclusion. Finally, we will cover how we adapted the project to a heritage setting in 2023 for a major exhibition, “Reimagining the Islandmagee Witches: an exhibition”.
All these webinars are free to attend, but registration is essential.
The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is happy to announce it has signed a new Cooperating Partnership agreement with the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (UBB), Romania. After already being a Cooperating Partner in 2017, UBB returns to DARIAH stronger and more motivated to advance Digital Humanities in Romania and to lead the country’s efforts towards full DARIAH membership.
DARIAH is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) whose mission is to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. In addition to having 22 Member states, DARIAH has also established a network of Cooperating Partners in non-member countries.
Babeș-Bolyai University is a multicultural public university with three official languages (Romanian, Hungarian and German). It is the oldest University in Romania, with a tradition of academic excellency going back to 1581. With over 500 undergraduate, graduate, PhD, and non-traditional academic programs in Romanian, English, Hungarian, German, and other international languages, encompassing all major academic fields (including four different theological faculties), and multiple campuses and research sites across Romania, UBB is a highly complex and comprehensive institution with an academic community of about 50 000 people.
“We are very pleased to welcome UBB back to the DARIAH family, which represents not only a natural continuation of our common projects, such as the SSH Open Marketplace and the ESU Summer School for Digital Humanities, but also a real chance to work towards Romanian national Membership in DARIAH,” said Edward J. Gray, DARIAH’s Officer for National Coordination.
UBB is strongly attached to its essential values regarding Tradition and Excellence in research, education, and relationship with society, following its academic motto: Traditio Nostra Unacum Europae Virtutibus Splendet! As such, it became a member of the EUTOPIA University alliance and of The Guild network of European research-intensive universities.
Since 2023, the Transylvania Digital Humanities Centre (DigiHUBB) at UBB is the organiser of the European Summer University in Digital Humanities “Culture & Technology” (previously hosted by Leipzig University since 2009), one of the major events of the DH community in Europe. Apart from DigiHUBB, multiple groups from various disciplines of the arts and humanities have been connected through the newly created Digital Arts & Humanities Centre, part of a university-wide Academic Research Network of Excellence (STAR-UBB-N).
“Access to and participation in major European research infrastructures are integral components of our university’s research internationalization strategy. The DARIAH Cooperating Partnership offers our top researchers the opportunity to collaborate with their European counterparts in the Arts and Humanities, creating an open space for scientific cooperation. Additionally, it provides Babeș-Bolyai University with the chance to bring together all major research institutions, governing bodies, and funding organisations in Romania as a consortium with a wealth of human resources and data from the arts and humanities to share with the DARIAH community and beyond.” – Dr. Christian Schuster, director of DigiHUBB and the ESU-DH at Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
As part of ESU’s Summer University, to be held from July 15-July 26th this year in Cluj-Napoca and with the support of DARIAH, a DARIAH Day will be organized to demonstrate to students as well as to the Romanian community the value that European Research Infrastructures like DARIAH has to DH research.
For more information on the Cooperating Partners membership in DARIAH, their role, tasks and benefits, have a look at our detailed post here.
The Irish Research Council seeks to appoint a National Coordinating Institution who will oversee the role of National Coordinator for DARIAH ERIC in Ireland.
The coordinator fulfils a number of roles, including:
representing the Council as required at national and international DARIAH events
serving as a link between the national steering committee and the DARIAH-EU coordination office
providing the secretariat and administration for the national DARIAH steering committee
Liaise with Irish representatives who are involved within the four strategic pillars of DARIAH – including education and research liaison – to engage the digital humanities (DH) stakeholder community in Ireland with DH tools, making training accessible in using tools and repositories
2023 has been one of DARIAH’s most successful years yet! In our round up of the past 12 months, we have welcomed new Cooperating Partnerships, expanded our network within Europe and beyond, and facilitated events, webinars, workshops and conferences, launched new features, received funding for exciting initiatives and prepared for another exciting year head as we build on the success of 2023 and look ahead to 2024.
We’ve selected twelve highlights from the past year to celebrate DARIAH’s successes on a European level and internationally, both within and beyond the digital humanities scholarly community.
1. In January, we welcomed the Multilingual Working Group to DARIAH, which aims at enhancing digitally-enabled research in under-resourced languages and dialects. It gathers scholars from diverse languages, who will assess the adaptation of existing tools to new languages and will develop tools to address the specific challenges represented by these languages.
2. In February, we celebrated the 2022 winner of the DARIAH Open Access Book Bursary, Erik Ketzan, who used it in support of his monograph, Thomas Pynchon and the Digital Humanities: Computational Approaches to Style (Bloomsbury, 2021). The Open Access Book Bursary gives a chance to scholars to publish their monographs in the field of digital humanities provided it is open access, thus creating great opportunities for the dissemination of research. In compliance with our eligibility criteria, this year’s award winning book will be made available Open Access retrospectively at the New Horizons in Contemporary Writing series of Bloomsbury Publishing.
4. Throughout March, April and May, we saw the successful completion of our popular in-house Friday Frontiers Spring Series. A diverse and exciting array of speakers delivered talks on a number of topics. The Spring Series 2023 line up featured Magdalena Wnuk & Marta Świetlik on “Queens of Humanities: Stories to Attract and Engage”, Anne Baillot on “How to learn and love digital text in four easy steps”, and Dr. Bahareh Heravi on “Data Journalism and AI: New Frontiers in Investigation and Storytelling”. Our popular webinars have allowed researchers, practitioners and stakeholders from across the broad DARIAH community, and now beyond, to learn about current research, best practice and social impact, and different tools and methods in digital humanities scholarly practice.
6. Our sixth highlight of the year was the Digital Humanities Helsinki Hackathon 2023which took place at the end of May, and brought together 60 participants from 13 countries to apply digital methods to a variety of datasets to solve pertinent research questions pertaining to the following themes: Epistolary exchanges, Interactional dynamics of online discussion, Early modern images, and Political polarisation in the Parliament.
7. Our seventh highlight of the year was the DARIAH Annual Event in Budapest, Hungary, which took place in June. We welcomed over 200 international participants to reflect on the theme of “Cultural Heritage Data as Humanities Research Data?”. Centred around three themes: 1) Sustainable workflows for data management and curation; 2) Imagining experimental data spaces for cultural heritage; and 3) Advancing digital methods for the analysis of cultural heritage, the 2023 event kicked off with meetings of DARIAH bodies, followed by three conference days with panels, papers, keynote speeches, performances and poster sessions. The opening keynote lecture by Thomas Padilla (Deputy Director at Archiving and Data Services of the Internet Archive) was entitled ‘A Mutualistic View of AI in the Library or a Continuation of Craft’ and the closing keynote panel entitled ‘DARIAH Data Spaces Dialogue: Imagining Experimental Data Spaces for Analysis of Cultural Heritage Using Digital Methods’, was chaired by DARIAH Director Sally Chambers.
8. Our eighth highlight of the year was #DH2024, the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations Annual Conference 2023 which took place in Graz, Austria in July. This year the theme focused on “Collaboration as Opportunity”, and DARIAH was well-represented across the week: DARIAH Director Toma Tasovac served as Programme Committee Chair alongside Anne Baillot, Director Agiatis Benardou 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”, and DARIAH also shared a booth with CLARIN-ERIC in the breakout space.
9. Our ninth highlight of the year sees us celebrating two full Membership Agreements that we signed this year with Switzerland and Spain, bringing our total number of full member countries to 22. Both countries were already integrated into the DARIAH network through their various co-operating institutions. Switzerland officially joined in May, while Spain joined in September. Since joining as an Observer country, the preparations towards full membership for Switzerland were accelerated. In November 2021, a network of 8 Swiss academic institutions, supported by the Academy for Social and Human Sciences (ASSH), founded the DARIAH-CH Consortium. Spain also joined CLARIN ERIC as well as DARIAH, providing even more of an opportunity to align national and European priorities and helping arts and humanities researchers thrive in the digital age.
10. Our tenth highlight of 2024 was the much-anticipated launch of our Tools & Services Catalogue in September. After months of work, the Catalogue was updated and streamlined so as best to facilitate access to over 200 hundred tools and services, divided into both Core and Community Services. It features a diverse array of resources available to support teaching, research, and much more in the sphere of digital humanities and beyond!
11. Our eleventh highlight of 2023 was four more Cooperating Partnership Agreements we signed during October and November with institutions in Sweden and the United Kingdom. We were thrilled to welcome both Linnaeus University and Uppsala University as Cooperating Partners: both universities are at the forefront of DH in Sweden, developing their specialities in the digital humanities in parallel; they were the first two universities to have joined DARIAH previously as cooperative partners. We also welcomed King’s College London and the School of Advanced Study at the University of London as Cooperating Partners. The Digital Humanities Research Hub (DHRH) is the centre of digital research at the School of Advanced Study plays a central role in supporting the School’s national mission by promoting digital humanities scholarship across the UK and by providing infrastructure and support for the digital humanities community. King’s College London (KCL) has a distinguished reputation in the Arts and Humanities and a long tradition of research in the Digital Humanities, going back to the early 1970s with a strong focus on research infrastructures.
12. Our twelfth highlight of 2023 was the successful completion of the Autumn/Winter Series of Friday Frontiers! This season featured Stella Wisdom, Digital Curator at The British Library, who spoke about “Curating the Digital Storytelling exhibition at the British Library”. Maria Goicoechea De Jorge (University of Madrid) delivered a talk entitled “New Readers for Old Texts: Sharing the Workflow of a Digitally Enriched Children’s Literature Edition”, and Nasrine Olson (University of Borås) spoke on “Bridging Sensory Gaps: Innovations for Inclusivity”. We had great attendance and engagement for this season’s speakers, marking another successful iteration of our popular in-house webinar series.
You can browse the highlights of our 12 DARIAHs of Christmas on our Twitter/X and LinkedIn. Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings from all of us at DARIAH!
The teams behind Programming Historian and DARIAH Campus are delighted to announce a collaboration that will see Programming Historian’s renowned peer reviewed training resources catalogued and available via DARIAH Campus.
“Programming Historian has a long and highly reputable place in the Digital Humanities training and education landscape, and for good reason” says Vicky Garnett, Training and Education Officer for DARIAH-EU. “DARIAH Campus has slowly built up its catalogue of excellent training resources from projects and infrastructures across the digital arts and humanities in Europe and beyond. We are therefore so thrilled to now include Programming Historian in our offerings and make them even easier to find for students, researchers and life-long learners in the DARIAH community”.
Programming Historians resources cover a wide range of topics in the digital humanities, offering practical lessons in methodologies and tools, alongside more theoretical lessons in areas such as data modelling. Furthermore, Programming Historian offers lessons in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, either as original training publications, or as translations.
“We are delighted to partner with DARIAH to make Programming Historian’s English-language lessons searchable within DARIAH-Campus’s Discovery Framework of external learning resources”, says Anisa Hawes, Digital Humanities Publishing Manager at Programming Historian. “This collaboration supports our goals of growing our readership and reaching new learning audiences.”.
DARIAH-EU and CLARIN ERIC are delighted to announce the Call for Participation for the first Baltic Digital Humanities Forum, which will take place in the National Library of Latvia, in Riga, Latvia, from 25-26 April 2024.
Digital humanities have become a solid part of the research landscapes in the Baltic countries. Certainly, over the past decades, this transformation has been evident through the vibrant and enthusiastic DH communities, the emergence of new research groups and centers, and the increasing presence of digital humanities courses and programs in higher education. This marks the right time for the digital humanities communities of the three Baltic States to come together, to look at how and in what directions DH has developed in our countries, to reflect on what is relevant today and to project what lies ahead in the near future.
The Baltic DH Forum will take place for two days. The initial day will comprise three sessions featuring invited speakers from the Baltic DH research communities, Ministries, and prominent European digital humanities infrastructures, including CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH-EU. The second day is designed as a networking platform providing an opportunity to present DH projects, showcase developed digital resources and tools, and introduce educational initiatives. Additionally, the afternoon of the second day will host a series of workshops covering successful practices in collaborative projects, fundraising opportunities, and other relevant topics.
Participation in the forum with presentation is free of charge with coffee breaks, lunches, and a dinner provided.
To apply for participation in the Baltic DH Forum “Demonstration and Networking Session” (2nd Day), you are invited to submit an abstract of your presentation (200–250 words) in one of the following categories:
DH resource or tool
Project
Educational initiative, including training materials
Submissions are encouraged in diverse areas within digital humanities, including, but not limited to:
Computational linguistics and language technologies
Computational literature studies
Digital history and archaeology studies
Digital folklore studies and ethnography
Digital cultural heritage
Digital musicology
DH and endangered cultures and languages
Digital environmental humanities
Game studies and digital humanities
Citizen science and crowdsourcing
Deadline for submitting proposals: 25 January 2024
DARIAH is delighted to announce that the Call for Participants is officially open for the Annual Event 2024, which will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, from June 18-21. The Annual Event will be hosted by NOVA FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, at Colégio Almada Negreiros, in the Campolide Campus of NOVA FCSH.
Building on the topic of last year’s Theme Call, the DARIAH Annual Event 2024 will be dedicated to the topic of Workflows: Digital Methods for Reproducible Research Practices in the Arts and Humanities. We are looking for contributions that explore, assess, analyse and embody the challenges of designing, implementing, documenting and sharing digitally-enabled workflows in the context of arts and humanities research from a technical, methodological, infrastructural and conceptual point of view.
Questions that we would like to see addressed include but are not limited to: what is the state of the art in research workflows in the digital arts and humanities? What are we doing well, and what should we do better? How can we evaluate the appropriateness of a workflow or assess its efficiency? What makes a workflow innovative? Are there differences in the way we define and implement workflows in different scholarly domains? What is the role of interdisciplinarity: how can collaborations between experts from different disciplines (arts, humanities, technology etc.) lead to innovative perspectives and more comprehensive solutions to specific challenges? What does it mean for a workflow to be ethical, reproducible and sustainable? What kind of documentation is necessary and at what level of granularity? Are there modelling, standardisation or data management frameworks that make the documentation of workflows easier? What is the role of training and education in preserving and communicating workflows? How do we — both institutionally and conceptually — become better aware of the tacit knowledge and hidden costs which seem to be embedded in most of our day-to-day professional activities? To what extent is the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) affecting our research workflows? What will be the role of responsible, human-centric AI in the future of research workflows? Finally, what should DARIAH do — in addition to treating workflows as a particular content type on the SSH Open Marketplace — to help researchers develop, deploy and disseminate workflows that contribute to the interoperability of data, tools and services?
Important dates:
Submissions are now open!
Extended Deadline for submissions: February 11, 2024
Notification of acceptance: expected by March 25, 2024
Following the successful establishment and implementation of the ERIC Forum Project, further efforts are needed to consolidate the integration of the ERICs (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) in the European Research Area. Therefore, the European Commission granted 3 million euros to expand coordination and cooperation among the ERICs. The project officially started on September 2023 and will run until August 2027. The kick-off meeting took place remotely on 15 September 2023 with the presence of Michael Arentoft, Head of Unit at the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission.
The project focuses on four crucial areas for the implementation and consolidation of the ERICs:
(a) The first thematic pillar is dedicated to the development of an online monitoring and reporting platform that will enable easy uploading and updating of the relevant data, information, and knowledge on the ERICs. The platform will be designed to offer relevant data to stakeholders and the general public. DARIAH leads this thematic pillar and will be involved throughout the whole process (data identification and collection, design and development of the platform, data stewardship).
(b) The second pillar looks towards the reinforcement of the European research infrastructure policy and international cooperation. The aim is to increase participation of ERICs in Horizon Europe funded projects. Another key aspect of this pillar is the strategic alignment of the ERICs with European policy priorities, with a special focus on internationalisation and transition towards the green and digital economy.
(c) The third pillar aims to deliver a strategy for an ERIC Forum back-office that will respond to the collective needs of the ERICs. To do so, the project will explore possibilities for the foundation of shared common resources and services for all ERICs. Also, ERICs need to overcome challenges related to the implementation of the ERIC regulation.
(d) Finally, the fourth pillar ensures the project coordination and communication, as well as improving engagement with external stakeholders.
The ERIC Forum 2 Project represents a great opportunity for DARIAH not only for strengthening links with other institutions, but also for finding concrete answers to challenges and bottlenecks that ERICs face, and reach full potential to become a leading science policy voice among the arts and humanities communities.
The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud to announce it has signed a Cooperating Partnership agreement with the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.
DARIAH is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) whose mission is to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. In addition to having 22 Member states, DARIAH has also established a network of cooperating partners in non-member countries.
‘The School of Advanced Study is delighted to be joining DARIAH as a cooperating partner,’ said Jane Winters, Professor of Digital Humanities at the School. ‘We place enormous value on the collaborations and partnerships that DARIAH enables, and look forward to working with colleagues across Europe to enhance support for digital scholarship in the humanities. We very much welcome the opportunity to be part of the DARIAH community and to learn from and contribute to its innovative and exciting programme of activities.’
The School of Advanced Study: The UK’s National Centre for Humanities Research
The School of Advanced Study (SAS) at the University of London plays a unique role in the UK’s research landscape due to its national mission to promote and facilitate research in the humanities. Through its eight research institutes and its specialist hubs for digital humanities and public engagement, it is focused on developing collaborative and distinctive research in the humanities, and in equipping researchers to navigate and contribute to the UK’s research and innovation landscape. The School provides unique humanities research infrastructure, which is underpinned by the research of its academic staff that seeks to advance knowledge beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
Supporting Digital Humanities Research across the UK
The Digital Humanities Research Hub (DHRH) is the centre of digital research at the School. Its multi-disciplinary team includes academics with strong connections to Classics, English, History, and Languages and Cultures, as well as practitioners and researchers from technical backgrounds. The Hub plays a central role in supporting the School’s national mission by promoting digital humanities scholarship across the UK and by providing infrastructure and support for the digital humanities community. The Hub supports national projects and initiatives, collaborates with partners across the UK and around the world, offers training and teaching in digital methods and approaches, and carries out its own interdisciplinary research and supervision. It also hosts a range of international research events exploring subjects including representations of AI, the ethics of 3D and cultural heritage, and hypertext and the humanities.
The Hub’s research strengths in born-digital archives, linked data, text analysis and encoding, and material culture are connected by a shared commitment to valuing digital cultural heritage in all its forms. The Hub seeks to promote an inclusive, open and responsible approach to digital humanities research, as demonstrated through its work to support environmentally responsible digital research practices, multilingual digital research, queer digital heritage and open scholarship.
Efforts to strengthen national, international and cross-sector collaborations underpin the School’s digital research activities. This is reflected in its current major initiatives:
Hosting and managing the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association, in partnership with the universities of Exeter, Glasgow, King’s College London and Southampton in the UK, and Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork and the University of Galway in Ireland. Formally launched in 2023, the Association seeks to nurture the capacity for excellent research and teaching in digital humanities, to establish more effective connections with sectors outside higher education, and to create new pathways for collaboration.
Participation in the UK’s Towards a National Collection programme, through partnership in the Congruence Engine project led by the Science Museum Group. SAS leads on the digital humanities work package of this three-year research project that uses the latest digital techniques to connect industrial history collections across the UK.
Leading on the project ‘Mapping the arts and humanities: uncovering hidden research infrastructure in the UK’, which seeks to captures the diversity of this critical infrastructure. The project has produced an interactive map to connect research activity more easily, and boost visibility for research centres and networks across the country.
Strengthening Digital Research Infrastructures with DARIAH
SAS has a shared commitment with DARIAH to strengthen the infrastructure and the provision of an evidence base to support investment in digital humanities research, particularly through the UK-Ireland DH Association. By joining as a cooperating partner SAS seeks to learn from DARIAH’s unparalleled knowledge and expertise in these areas, and to strengthen opportunities for international collaboration in ways that are mutually beneficial to the UK and Europe’s digital research infrastructures. As part of the School’s national mission to train the next generation of humanities researchers, staff are developing open training resources in digital humanities methods and approaches in areas including born-digital culture, 3D technologies and research software engineering. Following DARIAH’s lead in developing open teaching and training resources for the digital arts and humanities, the Hub is keen to contribute to the DARIAH-CAMPUS platform to make our resources more visible and accessible to international audiences.
The Hub’s staff have shared interests with a number of DARIAH Working Groups and are keen to share expertise, particularly in the areas of multilingual DH, linked data, ethical approaches to cultural heritage data and community engagement. The UK-Ireland DH Association has developed a number of reports on subjects including capacity enhancement, next generation careers, and diversity and inclusivity in DH which can contribute to wider European discussions in these areas. The Hub is also currently planning major events and publications with a focus on (born-)digital cultural heritage and welcomes collaborations with DARIAH members on these initiatives.
“As Director of DARIAH, I am thrilled with the co-operating partnership with the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. The School’s Digital Humanities Research Hub, with its expertise in born-digital archives, linked data, and material culture, aligns seamlessly with DARIAH’s mission to empower research communities with digital methods. Together, we embark on a journey to strengthen digital research infrastructure, promote an inclusive and responsible approach to digital humanities, and contribute further to the vibrant DARIAH community. This partnership exemplifies the collaborative spirit that fuels groundbreaking research, and I look forward to the innovative endeavors that will undoubtedly emerge from our shared commitment to advancing knowledge and collaboration in the digital arts and humanities.” — Agiatis Benardou, Member of the Board of Directors of DARIAH.
SAS is delighted to be joining as a cooperative partner at the same time as their close collaborators at King’s College London, and following DARIAH’s existing partnership with Exeter University. Building on existing partnerships through the UK-Ireland DH Association, SAS will work in close collaboration with these partners to strengthen the integration of the UK’s digital humanities community within the DARIAH community.
For more information on the Cooperating Partners membership in DARIAH, their role, tasks and benefits, have a look at our detailed post here.
The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud to announce it has renewed a Cooperating Partnership agreement with King’s College London in the United Kingdom.
DARIAH is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) whose mission is to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. In addition to having 22 member states, DARIAH has also established a network of cooperating partners in non-member countries.
“The renewal of our Cooperating Partnership with King’s College London is a key part of our overall strategy to bring DARIAH to the United Kingdom,” said Edward Gray, DARIAH’s Officer for National Coordination. “KCL has a longstanding history with DARIAH, and their strong DH experience and multitude of expertise and tools will be a valuable addition to our ecosystem. This partnership should tie KCL, and the UK, even closer to the European DARIAH network.”
King’s College London (KCL) has a distinguished reputation in the Arts and Humanities and a long tradition of research in the Digital Humanities (DH), going back to the early 1970s with a strong focus on research infrastructures (including the set-up of a central eResearch function). King’s is one of the few places in the world where students at all levels, including PhD, can pursue a wide range of interdisciplinary study involving the application of computing methods and tools in the arts and humanities. This is manifested in two complementary units in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
“I’m enthusiastic about the of King’s College London’s collaboration with DARIAH as cooperating partner: this partnership not only amplifies the impact of digital humanities in the UK but also opens doors for enhanced research projects, resource sharing, and knowledge exchange, ultimately strengthening the digital humanities landscape for research and teaching.”
Barbara McGillivray (Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Cultural Computation, DDH)
The Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) concentrates on research and academic teaching in the wider domain of DH and it is the largest department of its kind anywhere. The King’s Digital Lab (KDL), currently a research facility, has the broader remit to increase digital research capability in all arts, humanities and cultural heritage disciplines. The goal of establishing KDL in 2015 was to balance a commitment to intellectual quality and high-quality teaching with high intensity technical development, underpinned by industry-standard approaches to research software engineering (RSE), infrastructure management, and research data management.
“I am delighted to support this partnership agreement with DARIAH, which will strengthen connections with our fellow European partners and foster greater opportunities for innovation in digital humanities across a vibrant international research community with invaluable experience in developing open science across the arts and humanities.”
Paul Spence (Reader in Digital Humanities, DDH)
Research and Teaching Strengths of KCL
DDH is typically involved in more than 30 major research projects at any one time (with partners such as the British Library, the National Archives, the Tate, the British Museum, the Royal Archives) and offers a dedicated education in DH through a number of programmes: MA in Digital Humanities, MA in Digital Culture and Society, MA in Digital Asset and Media Management, MA in Big Data in Culture and Society, MSc in Digital Economy. It was the first department to launch a PhD programme in DH.
KDL undertakes a range of innovative digital collaborations both with academic staff across the Faculty and with external partners. KDL’s existing digital humanities activities are wide ranging, from creativity and AI, data visualization, machine learning as well as more traditional approaches such as digital scholarly editing, historical prosopographies and literary analysis. KDL actively developing research themes currently include Digital Creativity, (e.g. see Room is Sadand Digital Ghost Hunt), AI and Machine Learning (e.g. see Critical Modelling of Extensive Literary Data), and Indigenous Digital Humanities.
Integration with DARIAH
The renewed cooperation with DARIAH will allow DDH, KDL and other colleagues in Faculty to strengthen their international collaborations as well as access and contribute to DARIAH resources. The goal in the next three years will be for the UK to achieve full membership in DARIAH via the UK Ireland DH Association (of which KCL is a founding member) acting as the basis for a national consortium liaising with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and itsresearch infrastructures programme.
“King’s had a very important role in the early conception and set-up of DARIAH via colleagues like Sheila Anderson and Tobias Blanke. This partnership renewal confirms our firm intention to collaborate and follow up on the many other activities we undertook together (such as the DESIR project or the RSE training) as part of a diverse yet united community.”
Arianna Ciula (Director of KDL)
KDL will support DARIAH Cooperating Research Activities by adding resources, like code repository, onto the SSH Open Marketplace and will contribute with DDH to the Research Data Management working group, the Sustainable Publishing of (meta)Data working group, and the DARIAHTeach working group. In addition to the existing membership of Barbara McGillivray (DDH) to the SSH Open Marketplace editorial board, other outreach and networking activities will be identified on an ad hoc basis.
Beyond existing working groups, KDL and DDH are assessing appetite for two new Working Groups, one on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) – with a focus on social justice and inclusive practices in DH through collaborations, including involvement of indigenous communities, and one on RSE to leverage on the development of RSE communities of practice of within DARIAH, DH Tech ADHO SIG and the RSE CIG of the UK Ireland DH Association.
For more information on the Cooperating Partners membership in DARIAH, their role, tasks and benefits, have a look at DARIAH detailed post here.
The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud to announce it has signed Cooperating Partnership agreements with both Linnaeus University and Uppsala University in Sweden.
DARIAH is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) whose mission is to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. In addition to having 22 Member states, DARIAH has also established a network of cooperating partners in non-member countries.
“This is a really tremendous achievement,” said Edward Gray, DARIAH’s Officer for National Coordination. “The renewal of Linnaeus and Uppsala, historic Cooperating Partners, under our new framework opens a new chapter in our engagement in Sweden. Alongside their ambitious Huminfra research infrastructure network, we can expect great things from Sweden!”
Linnaeus University (Swedish: Linnéuniversitetet) (LNU) is an international public university in the province of Småland, Sweden, with two campuses located in Växjö and Kalmar. LNU was founded in 2010 by a merger of two former regional universities, and currently has approximately 44,000 enrolled students, of which 2,200 are international and 300 are doctoral students. It has 600 partner universities in more than 80 countries around the world.
Offering over 200 degree programmes and 1500 single-subject courses, the Linnaeus spirit encompasses creating a better future for individuals and the world we share. LNU strives to focus on how curiosity in knowledge creation generates utility through close collaborations, while setting knowledge in motion for a sustainable societal development.
Linnaeus University, Kalmar
Uppsala University (Swedish: Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Uppsala has an important historical place in Swedish culture and has ranked among the world’s 100 best universities in several international rankings.
The university has nine faculties distributed over three disciplinary domains: Humanities and Social Sciences, Medicine and Pharmacy, and Science and Technology. As of 2020, it had approximately 52,000 registered students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and 2,200 PhD students.
Uppsala University
Advancing the Digital Humanities in Sweden
Both universities are at the forefront of DH in Sweden, developing their specialities in the digital humanities in parallel; they were the first two universities to have joined DARIAH previously as cooperative partners. In 2016, LNU established a Digital Humanities Hub to bring together research and teaching expertise. The Hub aims to create a leading education, development and research regional centre that brings together existing expertise from LNU to address future societal challenges. Similarly, the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Uppsala University (CDHU) was initiated on the 1st of January 2021, and expands upon the activities of the Forum for Digital Humanities (2015–2017) and the Research network DH Uppsala (2018–2020). LNU and UU have since collaborated on the development of DH teaching and training, for example through the BALADRIA (Baltic-Adriatic Summer School on Digital Humanities), held annually since 2019, teacher exchanges on their two DH Master’s programmes, and writing project proposals. Three prominent examples of the latter are the establishment of Huminfra (with ten other partner organisations), a national graduate school in digital humanities, focusing on PhD education and networking, and WASP HS on AI in archives which hired two PhD students.
In 2017, Linnaeus University established the iInstitute, its local branch of the international iSchools consortium, as a platform for the iField — the information field which turns to transdisciplinary approaches to enrich and facilitate the generation, transfer and curation of data, information and knowledge through the widespread use of technology in order to maximise human potential.
Huminfra
Both LNU and Uppsala are part of Huminfra, Sweden’s national infrastructure supporting digital and experimental research in the Humanities by providing users with a single entry point for finding existing Swedish materials and research tools, as well as developing national method courses. The National Digital Humanities Infrastructure research consortium is led by Humlab at Lund University, other members of the Huminfra consortium include Lund University, Umeå University, University of Gothenburg, National Library of Sweden, The Swedish National Archives, Uppsala University, Swedish School of Library and Information Science, and Halmstad University. Huminfra is funded by the Swedish Research Council Infrastructure Grants. An application to extend this has been sent in February this year and the extended Huminfra is aimed until 2028. One of Huminfra’s aims is to apply for Swedish national membership in DARIAH.
International Connections
LNU belongs to the international iSchools Organisation, the International Association of Universities, EUniWell, the Baltic University Programme, and many other national and international higher education networks. Uppsala belongs to the Coimbra Group of European universities and to the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities. The Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (CDHU) collaborates with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in a project on digital antisemitism, is home to two ERC projects (Capture and ACTdisease) as well as a COST project on distant reading for European literary history. In July 2020, Uppsala became one of ten European universities in the three-year European pilot project called Enlight, which is part of the prestigious European Universities programme linked to a larger developmental effort within European higher education for 2025. Following a decision by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), Uppsala University will also be participating as a leading partner in the consortium that will advance the EU’s new investment in culture and creative industries (KIC EIT).
LNU participated in the Digital Methods Platforms for Arts and Humanities (DiMPAH) project, funded by Erasmus+ for 2020–2023, partners including LNU, and the Universities of Aarhus, Amsterdam, La Rochelle, Cyprus and Porto. DiMPAH built seven new OERs for DariahTeach, these resources are now complete and available on the DARIAH teach platform. LNU is the main organiser of the ‘Digital Humanities in Higher Education’ workshops as part of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (DHNB) annual conference. March 2023 marked the 6th annual workshop, focusing on higher education in DH, aiming at pedagogical development and related infrastructure building.
Our future in DARIAH
By collaborating with DARIAH, Linnaeus and Uppsala expect new opportunities to develop and to strengthen collaborations between Swedish institutions and European academic and heritage institutions. They are interested in building capacity and sharing expertise internally and externally, via the DARIAH marketplace and other platforms. They hope to link their local research and development work on arts and humanities infrastructures tighter to European platforms for mutual benefit, and as a foundation for a national Swedish DARIAH application. LNU is especially interested in research related to Information Studies and Knowledge Organisation, including LAMs (Libraries, Archives, Museums) as well as Cultural Heritage studies, while Uppsala has a strong interest in AI methods and tools and how these could be utilised and implemented or professionals, also targeting cultural heritage institutions. Both universities are currently working together on a project targeting AI in cultural heritage collections and archives; this could result in a new DARIAH working group.
Through the Huminfra national Swedish infrastructure they already collaborate with The National Swedish Library and the Swedish National Archives; they aim to help facilitate the transfer of these collaborations to DARIAH. Ultimately, the aim is to join DARIAH as a full Swedish national partner. Prof. Koraljka Golub writes, “We look forward to becoming part of DARIAH – the platforms, the networks, the know-how – while sharing, learning, and expanding DH across Europe and beyond. Ultimately, we hope to help do the same for Sweden as a full national member in the near future.”
For more information on the Cooperating Partners membership in DARIAH, their role, tasks and benefits, have a look at our detailed post here.
DARIAH is seeking an experienced and highly motivated project manager to coordinate the day-to-day activities and administration of ATRIUM, a project funded by the European Commission. ATRIUM (“Advancing FronTier Research in the Arts and Humanities”) aims to exploit and strengthen complementarities between leading European infrastructures in order to provide vastly improved access to state-of-the-art services available to researchers across countries, languages, domains and media, building on a shared understanding and interoperability principles established in the SSHOC cluster project and other previous collaborations.
Principal duties:
Ensuring the day-to-day running and administration of the project, including the spending of the budget;
Carrying out day-to-day project tasks including drafting letters, memoranda and project reports;
Collecting, reviewing to verify consistency and submitting reports, other deliverables (including financial statements and related certifications) and specific requested documents to the Granting Authority;
Supervising the timely implementation of project tasks and the delivery of expected results;
Coordinating the collaboration between numerous affiliated entities and partners within the project;
Organising and managing project meetings and events;
Working closely with the DARIAH Communication Officer to ensure that project developments and outcomes are communicated both internally, to various DARIAH bodies and communities, and externally to various stakeholders and third parties;
Carrying out further administrative and managerial tasks related to the general functioning of DARIAH ERIC as requested by the DARIAH Coordination Office and the Board of Directors.
The ideal candidate:
Holds a relevant higher education degree or equivalent qualification;
Has specific experience working in and managing EU projects;
Has specific experience working in and managing large-scale research projects, including event planning and general project workflows;
Has excellent oral and written communications skills with a proven ability to work with a wide range of internal and external partners and stakeholders ;
Is well-organised, conscientious, highly motivated and resourceful;
Has the ability to work independently as well as part of a team;
Is fluent in English (spoken & written); knowledge of German and/or another European language would be an asset;
Has experience speaking in public, presenting project reports and describing project outcomes.
Who we are
The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) enhances and supports digitally-enabled research and teaching across the arts and humanities. DARIAH is a network of people, expertise, information, knowledge, content, methods, tools and technologies from its member countries. It develops, maintains and operates an infrastructure in support of ICT-based research practices and sustains researchers in using them to build, analyse and interpret digital resources. By working with communities of practice, DARIAH brings together individual state-of-the-art digital Arts and Humanities activities and scales their results to a European level. It preserves, provides access to and disseminates research that stems from these collaborations and ensures that best practices, methodological and technical standards are followed.
DARIAH was established as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in August 2014. Currently, DARIAH has 22 member countries and numerous cooperating partners.
Terms and conditions
The appointment is for four years with an initial six-months probation period.
The salary will be based on TV-L 13 pay scale of Humboldt University Berlin.
The position is located at: DARIAH Coordination Office Berlin, Centre Marc Bloch e.V., Friedrichstr. 191, 10117, Berlin.
The closing date for applications is 5th November 2023.
The appointment is expected to start on 1st January 2024.
DARIAH ERIC is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to the employment policies, procedures and practices which do not discriminate on grounds such as gender, marital status, family status, age, disability, race, religious belief, sexual orientation or membership of the traveling community.
DARIAH ERIC is committed to a gender sensitive work environment aiming to reduce the barriers caused due to discrimination and gender bias.
Application procedure: If you are interested in applying for the position, please send your CV and a cover letter by email to recruitment@dariah.eu by 05 November 2023 at the latest.
We’re delighted to announce that the registration for the Autumn 2023 series of Friday Frontiers is now open, with the first session taking place in just over two weeks on Friday 6th October.
The details of the upcoming talks, along with their registration links are below:
Friday 6th October, 10.30 BST / 11.30 CEST / 12.30 EEST
Evolving technologies have changed how writers write, and readers read. Join curator Stella Wisdom for a talk about the British Library’s current Digital Storytelling exhibition. From thought provoking autobiographical hypertexts to data journalism, uncanny ghost stories to weather poetry, steampunk literary adaptation to Elizabethan medical comedy. Stella will discuss a range of born digital works, including interactive narratives that respond to user input, reading experiences personalised by data feeds, and immersive multimedia story worlds developed through audience participation.
About the Speaker:
Stella Wisdom is Digital Curator for Contemporary British Collections at the British Library. Their research interests are in digital storytelling, including the collection and curation of digital comics and interactive narratives. Stella’s collaborations include projects and events with AdventureX, the New Media Writing Prize, University College London’s Institute of Education and Lancaster University’s Litcraft initiative, which builds literary worlds in Minecraft.
Libraries worldwide are investing a significant portion of their resources in digitising their collections. Digitised formats are immensely valuable for researchers but may seem dry and unappealing to broader audiences, particularly when the original content was intended for children. This talk will present the preliminary research conducted on digitised formats of popular children’s literature found in specialised libraries, focussing on the models provided by two institutions: the British Library’s “Turning the Pages” software and the National Library of Spain’s “Madgazine,” used in the interactive editions of Don Quixote and Leonardo da Vinci’s Madrid Codex. The discussion will revolve around the specific workflow we tested for creating a digitally enhanced edition of a collection of stories entitled “Plage of Dragons,” published in 1923 and based on the Spanish adaptations of Edith Nesbit’s tales.
About the Speaker:
María Goicoechea is Associate Professor of the English Department at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Digital Letters. Her research interests focus on literary and artistic reception in the field of cyberculture. She has published extensively on cyberculture from the double perspective of science-fiction and electronic literature, paying particular attention to changes in reading rituals, transliteracy, and the evolution of literary publishing formats. Prof. Goicoechea is a member of LEETHI Research Group (UCM), and of HERMENEIA (Universitat de Barcelona), two interdisciplinary research groups dedicated to the study of literature and computers. She has been the Principal Investigator of the project eLITE-CM in Electronic Literary Edition (50% co-financed by the European Social Fund). She has co-curated several electronic literature exhibitions and, together with Laura Sánchez, is the co-founder of Ciberia Project, a web dedicated to the promotion of electronic literature. She is the author of Mi robot lunático (2019), an interactive story for children, and editor of the Interactive Calleja Project (2021), a collection of digitally enriched short stories based on Edith Nesbit’s tales.
With around 15% of the global population experiencing some form of disability, have we truly considered what ‘inclusion’ and ‘equal opportunity’ means for all? This talk confronts the reality that most spaces, technologies, and innovations are predominantly designed for individuals with all senses and functionalities intact. How would you as a person with deafblindness navigate the world – a world filled with navigation and mobility challenges, inaccessible information, and technologies that rely on the senses of sight and hearing? In this talk, Nasrine Olson (PhD, Associate Professor) will introduce the idea behind the formation of the Centre for Inclusive Studies at University of Borås and will present a few projects that have explored ways in which technology can be leveraged to level the playing field.
About the Speaker:
Nasrine Olson is an Associate Professor in the field of Library and Information Science at SSLIS, University of Borås, Sweden. Core research interests relate to issues of power and the relationships in day-to-day action, and broader societal structures. In more recent years her focus has been on the societal implication of ICTs and information practices that enable or hinder the potential for equal opportunity for all. She has also been instrumental in creating research environments that promote, and lead to, improved inclusive technologies and environments by coordinating projects such as EU-funded projects MuseIT (2022-2025) and SUITCEYES (2018-2021). Nasrine is also the director of an interdisciplinary research centre called INCLUDE – Centre for Inclusive Studies, where through critical examination the ideology of normal, the unequal treatments of societal members is explored.
We are delighted to share the launch of the DARIAH Tools and Services catalogue after a lot of work from our team!
You can now browse the DARIAH tools and services, access those from SSH Open Marketplace, and explore the rich array of over 200 resources available to support research and enable the infrastructure to carry out its mission.
Here, you can find a selection of our Core Services, which are mature services owned by DARIAH-ERIC and provided by different national nodes. There are also the Community Services, owned by one or more of our DARIAH partner institutions, which usually support local capacity building and scientific instrumentation. A fantastic array of tools & services are available to search and explore, and we are thrilled to bring them to the DARIAH network and wider community!
The General Assembly of the DARIAH ERIC recently voted unanimously to accept Spain’s application for full membership in the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities.
“We are delighted to welcome Spain as DARIAH’s twenty-second member state,” said Toma Tasovac, President of the DARIAH Board of Directors. “We are looking forward to working with our Spanish colleagues, aligning national and European priorities and helping arts and humanities researchers thrive in the digital age. We are also grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation for their support in this process.”
Following the example of similar successful initiatives in other European countries, the Spanish INTELE strategic network (2020-2022) proposed that the CLARIAH-ES national consortium officially integrates Spain into both CLARIN and DARIAH research infrastructures.
CLARIAH-ES has the mission to expand upon the existing partnerships and projects, and facilitate the access of the Spanish Digital Humanities community to national research infrastructures, as well as the DARIAH-EU infrastructure. It is made up of a multidisciplinary group of experts in the humanities and social sciences, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and language technologies in, among others, the co-official languages of Spain (Spanish, Catalan, Basque, and Galician).
“With this adhesion Spain reinforces its participation in the social sciences and humanities ESFRI research infrastructures in response to the demand of the national research community” said Raquel Yotti, Secretary General for Research in the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain, “We are convinced that the federation in DARIAH ERIC of our National Node composed of research centers and universities spread throughout the national territory, will contribute to make the European infrastructure stronger thanks to their data repositories, computing facilities and knowledge in Spanish and co-official languages”.
The ambitious objectives of this infrastructure can only be achieved by gathering the necessary resources in terms of data, computing facilities and knowledge that are generally not available to single research groups in Spain.
INTELE (2020-2022), a strategic research network, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, was created with the aim of promoting Spain’s participation in different European research infrastructures.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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