DARIAH invites applications for small grants supporting in-person summer schools and intensive training events in the Digital Arts and Humanities (DAH) that will take place in 2026. This programme aims to strengthen training opportunities, expand digital skills in the arts and humanities, and support collaboration across research, education, and cultural heritage communities.

Objectives

• Promote methodological innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration;
• Support digital skills development for researchers, early stage researchers, and cultural heritage professionals;
• Encourage inclusive and geographically diverse participation;
• Foster knowledge sharing within the DAH community.

Information on Funding

The total allocated to this call is €10,000. Typical grant range: €2,000 – €5,000 per event. Funding may support instructor travel, participant bursaries, teaching materials, technical infrastructure, and organisational expenses related to the event. However, proposals that privilege participant bursaries (travel, accommodation, and daily expenses) will be considered more highly. 

Matched funding involving other funding sources is possible.

Eligible Activities

• Summer schools or training schools
• Intensive workshops
• Hackathons with a strong training component 
• Method-focused training events

Events should normally last between 3–10 days and include hands-on digital arts and humanities training.

Eligibility

Applications may be submitted by universities, research institutions, cultural heritage institutions (libraries, archives, museums), or a consortium of partner organisations. The lead institution must be part of a DARIAH national consortium in a DARIAH member state, with the event taking place at the lead institution. For a list of eligible institutions please see the members and partners page on the DARIAH website. Alternatively, non-consortium  institutions in DARIAH member states can be lead institutions, but with the written consent of the DARIAH National Representative of their country. Inquiries about the scheme can be made to funding@dariah.eu.

Selection Criteria

Applications will be assessed based on training quality, relevance to the DARIAH impact, inclusivity and accessibility, and organisational feasibility.

Acknowledgement

DARIAH’s support should be acknowledged in event communications and on any other materials.

Reporting

Grant recipients must submit a short report after the event no later than four weeks after the end of the event, summarizing participation, outcomes, and links to training materials where available. Successful applicants will receive 60% of the funding upon signature of a grant agreement between DARIAH and the lead institution, and 40% upon submission of the report. Reports that are submitted after four weeks of the event may not receive the remainder of the funding.

Deadline

Applications must be submitted by 16 April 2026 at 17:00 CEST*.

* Should the total funding pool remain unexhausted after the initial selection round, the call will move to a rolling application process:
From April 16, 2026 17:00 CEST onwards, applications will be reviewed and granted strictly on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications must still meet all eligibility and quality requirements to be successful.This extension will remain active only until the remaining funds are fully allocated.

Join us for the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon 2026—an opportunity to collaborate and innovate in an interdisciplinary setting. The application period is open (until 14 April 2026) – apply now to be part of this year’s cohort.

People talk about hackathons, but there is only one Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon. #DHH26 is the 11th iteration of our international summer school (aimed primarily at master’s students and beyond), which brings together diverse participants from Finland and across Europe. 

In the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon, you will experience an interdisciplinary research project from start to finish within the span of 10 days. For researchers and students from computer science and data science, the hackathon gives the opportunity to test their abstract knowledge against complex real-life problems. For people from the humanities and social sciences, it shows what is possible to achieve with such collaboration.  For everyone, the hackathon gives the experience of intensely working with people from different backgrounds as part of an interdisciplinary team, as, during the hackathon, each group develops a digital humanities research project from start to finish. Working together, they formulate research questions with respect to particular data sets, develop and apply methods and tools to address them, and present the work at the end of the hackathon. 

Participation in #DHH26 is free for all accepted participants. This year, we also expect to sponsor a limited number of participants from outside Finland with flights and accommodation (decisions on this to be made after the application period). 

The event is organised by FIN-CLARIAH—particularly its DARIAH-FI component—in collaboration with HELDIG and the Department of Digital Humanities at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Helsinki, as well as Aalto University. We are supported by CLARIN-EU, HIIT, the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History, and Marie Curie Training Networks CASCADE & MECANO. 5 ECTS credits may be gained from participating in the hackathon for students, and it also functions as a staff training event for leadership and collaboration across disciplinary borders.

For information on what the hackathon was like in previous years, see #DHH25, #DHH24, #DHH23,#DHH22, #DHH21, #DHH19, #DHH18, #DHH17, #DHH16 and #DHH15.

Themes

This year, the hackathon groups are organised around the following five themes:

• Parliaments Beyond Borders: Exploring the Role of Foreign Nations in National Policy Debates
• Crimes and Punishments: “True Crime” in Britain during the 19th century
• The Language of Profits: A Multi-Disciplinary Exploration of Corporate and Legal Rhetoric
• Large-Scale Patterns of Knowledge Production Through the Lens of 200 Million Books Across 600 Years
• Decoding the System of Finnic Oral Poetry

See further information on the #DHH26 themes.

Ap­plic­a­tion sched­ule for #DH­H26

17.3.2026 This year’s themes are unveiled, and the application period starts
14.4.2026 Application period ends
27.4.2026 Registration period ends for #DHH26 for accepted participants
4.5. & 11.5.2026 Two #DHH26 pre-hackathon online preparatory sessions
20.–29.5.2026 #DHH26 hackathon in Helsinki

Please note that we can only accept participants who are able to commit to the full week of intensive work (not just a couple of hours here and there), as well as the preparatory sessions. Thus, if you know that you have other commitments during the hackathon, please consider applying next time when you can make a full commitment.

Venue

Minerva Plaza, Siltavuorenpenger 5 A (see on mapOpens in a new tab)
University of Helsinki
Finland

Prac­tic­al­it­ies and Timetable

The hackathon will take place between 20.–29.5.2026. The participants are expected to commit to the hackathon for the whole period; work takes place mainly between 10 AM and 5 PM on weekdays (the weekend is free!). In addition, there are two online pre-sessions on Mondays 4.5. and 11.5., between 2 – 4 PM UTC+03:00 for orientation, group formation and preparation for the intensive hackathon period. The participants are expected to attend also these pre-sessions.

Public presentations of the projects:
29.5.2026 13:00–16:00, Minerva Plaza, Siltavuorenpenger 5 A, room K226.
The event will be streamed at https://video.helsinki.fi/unitube/live-stream.html?room=l5

Or­gan­isa­tion

General organisers:

• Mikko TolonenOpens in a new tab, professor in computational history at the University of Helsinki
• Eetu MäkeläOpens in a new tab, professor in human sciences – computing interaction at the University of Helsinki
• Jukka SuomelaOpens in a new tab, associate professor in distributed algorithms, logic and complexityOpens in a new tab at Aalto University
• Jouni TuominenOpens in a new tab, university researcher at HSSHOpens in a new tab, University of Helsinki

You can contact the organisers via email: dhh-hackathon@helsinki.fi.

DARIAH ERIC is calling for applications to join the DARIAH Joint Research Committee (JRC) as a member. The JRC organises the integration of DARIAH’s technical developments and innovation activities, acting as a link between DARIAH Working Groups and executive/governing bodies. While supporting the organisation of the DARIAH Annual Event, the JRC members are also involved in the development of DARIAH policies and/or strategies relevant to their expertise. In this context, we look for applicants with expertise in the area of Communities, as expressed in the DARIAH Strategic Pillar 4 (we support communities in expanding their capabilities to respond effectively to new and emerging requirements in their research environments, see DARIAH Strategic Plan for details).

DARIAH’s Joint Research Committee (JRC):

• is one of the two operational bodies of DARIAH ERIC. It contributes to the alignment and strategic vision of DARIAH’s scientific and technical activities across the DARIAH network and advises the Board of Directors on these matters.  
• is composed of between six and ten experts from DARIAH Member or Observer countries. Their expertise represents scientific and/or technical fields relevant for DARIAH.

Members of the JRC engage in strategic tasks, are dedicated to community engagement, and hold operational responsibilities. More concretely, a JRC member:

• Provides  strategic advice to the Board οf Directors (BoD) throughout the year, including participation in the annual DARIAH Strategy  Days. 
• Bridges community technical infrastructure developments and strategic initiatives. 
• Contributes to DARIAH white papers and strategic task forces.
• Works closely together with the DARIAH Working Groups; monitors their activities,  sanctions new ones, and represents them in the broader DARIAH governance.
• Acts as core of the Programme Committee of the DARIAH Annual Event.
• Acts as Review Board for other DARIAH calls (e.g., Working group funding call).

The JRC meets about every 6 weeks, and at least once in a year face to face. 

Being a JRC member is an excellent way to make your personal expertise available for the wider network of research infrastructures in the humanities and to shape their future. It is also an opportunity to gain experiences in research management at a European level. We expect from the new JRC member expertise in the area she/he applies for, next to innovative ideas on the directions the DARIAH community should go to and how.

Details of the application

The application should include  a motivation letter (max one page) in which you elaborate why you wish to join the JRC, what expertise you bring to this body including how you envision contributing to DARIAH in this role. Please also add your CV to this application and send it as an email to jrc@dariah.eu by May 18, 2026.

Conditions of the position

We solicit applications from experts from DARIAH Partner Institutions* in DARIAH Member and Observer countries. 

JRC members are selected and appointed by the BoD as individuals based on their expertise and disciplinary focus. No formal legal framework between DARIAH and the DARIAH Partner Institution employing the JRC member is foreseen. However, in the case a member requires formal institutional recognition to secure their time dedicated to the JRC, DARIAH may provide a letter of appointment or a bilateral agreement tailored to the specific needs of the JRC member, if needed.

Please note that this appointment is not a paid position, but that DARIAH covers occasional travel expenses (e.g., to the Strategic Days and the Annual Event). The time and commitment is eligible as an official contribution of your country to DARIAH (so-called ‘in-kind’ contributions). Please contact your DARIAH National Coordinator (see list) while preparing your application.

The appointment is usually for 3 years and can be prolonged for one additional term. 

*According to Article 11 of the DARIAH Statutes, DARIAH Partner Institutions are institutions, either public or private, which serve a public mission, actively contribute to DARIAH, and are situated in a DARIAH Member or Observer country and are either part of the official National Consortium or approved by the National Coordinator.

Application and Selection Procedure

The decision process on this position is as follows: The JRC reviews the applications within four weeks and may reach out to the corresponding National Coordinator. The recommendation of the JRC will be shared with the BoD, who approves and appoints the new JRC member. 

If you are interested, please send an application to jrc@dariah.eu by May 18, 2026.

Please contact jrc@dariah.eu if you have further questions. 

DARIAH is seeking an experienced research software engineer to support the technical integration 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. The role would support ATRIUM’s work plan from a technical perspective, including multiple interrelated lines of action across data and metadata harmonisation, workflows, and service integration.

Principal duties:

• Testing cloud infrastructures such as EOSC and Galaxy, mainly by deploying ATRIUM workflows there;
• Integrating existing catalogues, especially the SSH Open Marketplace, with OpenAIRE as a prerequisite for broader EOSC integration;
• Develop tooling (scripts, dashboards) to explore, compare and visualise catalogue data across the European A&H landscape;  
• Enhancing metadata and vocabulary harmonisation across ATRIUM catalogues to improve semantic interoperability;
• Contributing to the technical integration of services, catalogues and workflows across DARIAH;
• Supporting the development, testing and maintenance of interoperability solutions, APIs and data pipelines that facilitate the exchange and reuse of data and services. 

The ideal candidate:

• Holds a higher education degree in computer science, information science, digital humanities or equivalent qualification;
• Has experience working on technical integration, preferably in the context of research infrastructures or large-scale digital platforms;
• Has experience with cloud infrastructures and workflow execution platforms, like Galaxy and/or EOSC; 
• Has experience with metadata modeling, vocabulary harmonisation and semantic interoperability;
• Has experience developing scripts, APIs, or data-processing pipelines to support integration across distributed systems; 
• 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. 

Who we are

DARIAH – the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities – is a European research infrastructure whose mission is to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. 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 24 member countries and numerous cooperating partners.

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 20 April 2026 at the latest.

For more information and details on the application procedure, please download the full post description.

DARIAH is delighted to publish the latest Spotlight article Saints, Scrolls, XML: Rediscovering Bulgaria’s Church Mural Texts. This article is part of the DARIAH Spotlight campaign, a monthly series that focuses on digital scholarship within the DARIAH network.

Written by Dimitar Iliev, Assistant Professor in Ancient Greek and Latin at the Department of Classics of the “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia, Bulgaria, National Coordinator for Bulgaria in DARIAH-EU and Co-coordinator of the South-East European DARIAH Regional Hub, this article presents the research and technical implementation of the DH project ORASIS which aims to thorough document, publish (in many cases, for the first time in English), and study the (post-)Byzantine inscriptions accompanying church murals in today’s Bulgaria.

This project allowed the first application of an EpiDoc-compliant XML template and front-end to post-Byzantine religious art, as EpiDoc is typically used for monuments of other types and periods. So far, around 30 inscriptions have been digitised, out of the initial set of 230, revealing curious cases of text reuse and reinterpretation, reflecting the shifting boundaries of complex identities so characteristic of South-East Europe during the Ottoman period. The inherent interactivity of digital publication will facilitate the study of the different connections between text and image patterns, many of which are far from obvious, and will thus contribute to our better understanding of the past.

This article is part of DARIAH’s latest outreach campaign, DARIAH Spotlight, which makes research within the DARIAH network more visible. This monthly series will showcase digital scholarship in the humanities, from both DARIAH Working Groups and DH projects within the DARIAH network. Follow this campaign for more Spotlight articles.

Following years of participation in DARIAH with Cooperating Partnerships, Slovakia joined DARIAH ERIC as a full member in February 2026.

“The Board of Directors warmly welcomes Slovakia as a full member of DARIAH ERIC” said Dr. Agiatis Benardou, President of the DARIAH Board of Directors. “This milestone reflects years of dedication from the Slovak consortium and strong national support. DARIAH-SK brings valuable expertise in digital research collections, linguistic resources, and Open Science, strengthening both Central European cooperation and the wider DARIAH network. We look forward to close collaboration and to Slovakia’s active contribution to the European Research Area.”

The DARIAH-SK infrastructure

The DARIAH-SK consortium is led by the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences and is supported by the Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic. It is a distributed research infrastructure composed of a network of geographically dispersed and coordinated domestic institutions. These institutions offer a wide range of digital and analog services to the scientific community and the general public. 

The consortium consists of the following partners:

• Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences (IESA SAS) – National Coordinating Institution
• Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics Slovak Academy of Sciences (ĽŠIL SAS)
• Institute of Archaeology Slovak Academy of Sciences (IA SAS)
• Central Library of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (CL SAS)
• Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (SCSTI)
• Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies (KInIT)
• Off grid lab (OGL)

“It’s been a long journey to get Slovakia into DARIAH ERIC, and we’re thrilled to finally be here,” said Andrej Gogora, National Coordinator of DARIAH-SK. “A huge thanks goes to the Slovak Ministry of Education and the entire DARIAH-EU team for backing this vision. Now that the door is open, my focus shifts to ensuring our community takes full advantage of it. We are ready to turn this membership into real-world collaborations and make a meaningful contribution to the European research landscape.”

National priorities

The strengths of DARIAH-SK are defined by the specific expertise of its partners, with a focus on areas such as thematic research collections, open-source repository systems for presenting the tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and corpus databases and other linguistic resources. Other significant strengths include the popularization of Open Science Policy and the ethical evaluation of modern technologies. The consortium’s activities also leverage significant human capital, with dozens of researchers, technical staff, and students engaged in research, digitization, and documentation. 

“Slovakia’s membership in DARIAH ERIC represents a significant milestone for our research and innovation ecosystem”, said Simona Foltinová, National representative of DARIAH ERIC on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth. “Our ministry views this step as a strategic investment in strengthening international cooperation, expanding access to advanced digital research infrastructures and supporting the active participation of Slovak institutions within the European Research Area.”

As a nascent platform, DARIAH-SK is currently in a preparatory phase, focusing on community coordination, strategic development, and securing financial resources to fulfill its mid-term priorities. DARIAH-SK is an open platform, willing to accept new thematically and professionally relevant domestic partners.

By joining DARIAH ERIC, DARIAH-SK aims to strengthen its collaboration, particularly with partners from Central Europe and the surrounding regions and to revitalize the activities of the DARIAH Central European Hub, with the participation of Czech (LINDAT/CLARIAH-CZ), Austrian (CLARIAH-AT), Polish (DARIAH-PL), and Hungarian (Eötvös Loránd University) DH initiatives.

Furthermore, DARIAH-SK is interested in establishing closer collaborations with selected university departments in Slovakia to accelerate the creation and implementation of DH subjects in domestic higher education programs. The expertise of DARIAH-EU, notably on the Training and Education strategic pillar, will provide significant support for this endeavor.

The ARTEMIS Summer School 2026 is a two-and-a-half-day in-person training and networking programme dedicated to Reactive Heritage Digital Twins (RHDT) and their application to cultural heritage conservation, restoration and valorisation.

The Summer School is organised within the framework of the ARTEMIS – Applying Reactive Twins to Enhance Monument Information Systems project, funded by the European Union.

• Location: Hof University, Hof (Germany)
• Dates: 16 (afternoon) – 17-18 June 2026
• Number of participants: maximum 20

What to expect?

The Summer School is conceived as a practice-oriented and collaborative learning environment. It aims to strengthen participants’ capacity to design, implement and critically assess Reactive Heritage Digital Twin approaches within institutional, professional and research contexts.

Participants will engage in:

• Keynotes and expert-led sessions on RHDT concepts and workflows
• Lectures on interoperability, semantic modelling, IoT/IoCT integration and simulation services
• Hands-on workshops working in interdisciplinary teams

What will you gain?

• A clear understanding of the workflow from 3D documentation to simulation and RHDT
• Insight into interoperability and data ecosystems for heritage
• Practical experience in defining scenarios and KPIs for digital heritage applications
• Opportunities to connect with professionals across Europe

Who should apply?

The Summer School welcomes professionals and researchers from:

• Cultural heritage management and conservation
• Digital humanities and heritage research
• 3D documentation and modelling
• Data infrastructures and interoperability
• IoT/IoCT, simulation and AR/VR

Participation is limited to 20 on-site participants to ensure interactive exchange.

Successful applicants will receive accommodation for four nights (15-19 June 2026) and travel reimbursement up to €200 upon submission of valid receipts. Participation in the Summer School is free of charge.

Further details are available in the Call for Applications:

To apply please fill out the Application Form:

Key Dates

• Opening of the Call: 19.02.2026
• Application Deadline: 19.03.2026
• Notification of Results: 10.04.2026
• Confirmation Deadline for Selected Participants: 20.04.2026

*This post is republished from the ARTEMIS website.

On 5 March 2026, the CLARIN & DARIAH Spring Conference will take place at UL Sapere Aude Hall (Kalpaka Boulevard 4), bringing together researchers, language technology experts, and everyone interested in digital humanities. This conference is a strategically important event that connects national consortia of two leading international research infrastructures in the humanities – CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH-EU – to promote collaboration, knowledge exchange, and the development of digital solutions in the fields of the humanities and social sciences.

The conference program includes experience stories about the operation of the DARIAH and CLARIN infrastructures in Latvia and Europe, highlighting their practical significance in research and interdisciplinary cooperation. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about specific projects, examples, and solutions; digital tools, as well as the use of data and digital resources in the humanities and social sciences, will be demonstrated. The conference will conclude with a discussion addressing the importance of digital infrastructures for the development of the humanities, the challenges involved in building them, and the needs of researchers.

This year marks 10 years since Latvia joined CLARIN ERIC, making a sustained contribution to improving access to language resources, developing digital tools, and fostering international integration in the research environment. Inguna Skadiņa, Head of CLARIN-LV, Professor at the University of Latvia, and Leading Researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, notes:

“Latvian language and cultural life in the digital environment are important to each and every one of us. Digital infrastructures make it possible to preserve research results in the long term and promote the availability of language and cultural data for research, education, and all interested users.”

Meanwhile, Latvia is still on its way toward joining DARIAH-EU – Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities. Emphasizing the need for Latvia to obtain full DARIAH-EU membership status, Sanita Reinsone, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Latvia, says:

“Over the past few years, our digital humanities community has drawn closer to DARIAH-EU, and we would like to thank the Ministry of Education and Science for supporting our efforts in strengthening this cooperation. This experience has highlighted how important national consortia and collaboration are for the development of digital humanities. The spring conference, which will become an annual event, provides an excellent platform to meet, learn about the latest developments in digital humanities in Latvia, and discover what our colleagues are working on.”

Registration for the conference is open until March 3: https://www.digitalhumanities.lv/notikumi/clarin-dariah-pavasara-konference2026

The conference is organized by the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Latvia, the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Latvia, and the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, with support from the project “University of Latvia and Institutes in the European Research Area – Excellence, Activity, Mobility, Capacity” (No. 1.1.1.5/3/25/I/011).

* This post is republished from the Digital Humanities in Latvia website.

Interoperable, collaborative, digital: about the data space

The common European data space for cultural heritage is a flagship initiative of the European Commission. It enables the open and trustworthy sharing of cultural heritage data across Europe through innovative technical infrastructure, a rich suite of tools, standards and frameworks and a vibrant and collaborative community.

Led by the Europeana Initiative, the data space empowers cultural heritage institutions and European Union Member States to embrace and drive digital transformation. As one of the 14 interoperable common European data spaces funded through the DIGITAL Europe Programme, it is central to Europe’s ambition of building a thriving, data-driven society.

A new home for the data space

If you work in, with or around cultural heritage, the data space’s new website is for you!

Building on its previous online presence, the website offers a gateway to explore the rich data offer, products, frameworks, tools, activities, events and projects, as well as the vibrant community and committed network of partners that bring the data space for cultural heritage to life. It also provides access to a suite of data space products – ranging from the Europeana Academy and training platform to the Statistics Dashboard and Europeana.eu.

The homepage gives you an overview of what the data space is, what it offers and how you can get involved. It also offers you quick access to products like Europeana.eu and the Europeana APIs, so you start using data in the data space immediately, and to the Europeana Network Association, so that you can join its community of professionals today.

The about the data space page offers a deeper dive into the work of the data space, and tells you more about its partners, key facts and figures and impact.

The explore the data space page spotlights the projects, training, tools and events the data space offers, as well as the latest news from across the ecosystem.

The explore the collections page provides direct links to the data in the data space, made available through Europeana.eu or the aggregators who support cultural heritage institutions across Europe to share their data.

A multilingual experience

We are delighted that, using the automated translation service of the European Commission, the website is now available in the 24 official languages of the European Union. We hope that this will mean that even more people across Europe – and the world – can discover and make use of all the data space has to offer.

Follow the developments

As the data space grows, we will continue to develop and enrich the website, so stay tuned for important updates through news posts and the Europeana LinkedIn and Bluesky accounts. We also encourage you to share this news with your networks and colleagues so that they can discover and benefit from the data space.

* This post is republished from the common European data space for cultural heritage website. DARIAH ERIC is a project partner in the Deployment of a common European data space for cultural heritage project (DS4CH).

Applications are currently open until March 9th 2026 for the ATRIUM Summer School 2026: From Maps to Data and Data to Maps: Exploring Spatial Histories, taking place in Athens, Greece, from June 29th-July 2nd.

The summer school is organized by the UNESCO Chair on Digital Methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences as part of the Horizon Europe project ATRIUM, with the cooperation of the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton and the Athena Research Centre, and will take place at the Athens University of Economics and Business in Athens, Greece. Instructors will include members of the UNESCO Chair on Digital Methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Athens University of Economics and Business, the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, the Princeton University Library, and the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU).

This summer school is designed for scholars and professionals interested in exploring digital humanities methods for mapping and spatial visualization. Mapping in the digital humanities provides new perspectives on sources, enables analysis in a spatial context, and offers visual representations of arguments and narratives. Participants will be introduced to key topics, including spatial data collection, geocoding, georeferencing, map annotation, data wrangling, and different types of maps, platforms, and hosting services.

The school is open to scholars from all disciplines, regardless of technical background. Experience with mapping, GIS methods, tools, and concepts is welcome but not required. This summer school will be of particular interest to those in History, Archaeology, Urban Studies, Architecture, Cultural Studies, Public Humanities, and Photography. Knowledge of Greek is not required.

To apply, visit the Athens University of Economics & Business website or click the link below.

Deadline: 9th March 2026

* This post is republished from the ATRIUM website.

We’re delighted to announce that the registration for the Spring 2026 series of Friday Frontiers is now open. The Friday Frontiers webinars allow 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.

The webinar sessions are all free to attend, but registration is required.  Presentations are all recorded and published at a later date on DARIAH-Campus. 

The details of the upcoming talks, along with their registration links are below:

Friday 6th March 2026, 11.30am CET

Title: “Can this be done?” New research tools for studying human interaction 

Speakers: Stefan Lindgren & Carolina Larsson, Lund University

Registration: https://dariah.zoom.us/meeting/register/OTW1rrYUQpSE9cb2GLauig

This presentation aims to demonstrate a new workflow for using motion capture to study human movement and interaction. The workflow arose from a collaboration with Riksteatern Crea, a theatre group in Sweden that creates stage productions in sign language designed for deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing audiences alike. They asked whether it is possible to transfer the complex movements of a sign-language performer to a digital avatar that could be projected onto a stage and interact in real time with both the audience and live actors. The answer was yes. Here we outline the development of a simplified, more efficient workflow for researchers studying human interaction through body movement and gesture using motion capture devices of different kinds and a free game developing software called Unreal Engine.

About the speakers:

Stefan Lindgren

Stefan Lindgren is a research engineer at Lund University Humanities lab, a multiuser research infrastructure that provides tools and knowledge to conduct research about human behavior, communication, cognition and culture. He is acting technical manager for the lab and has a background in computer technology with a special interest in 3d-data and 3d-visualisations. He has been involved in a large number of research projects helping out with 3d-documenation all over the world. His expertise includes 3d-scanning, photogrammetry, motion capture and 3d-visualisations.

Carolina Larsson

Carolina Larsson is a systems developer at Lund University Humanities lab, a multiuser research infrastructure that provides tools and knowledge to conduct research about human behavior, communication, cognition and culture. Carolina is an expert in 3d-modelling and is proficient in Blender, a 3d-software that covers most aspects of 3d-modelling. She has a solid experience in working with and manipulating 3d-data from any kind of 3d-acquisition.  She has been working with 3d-documentation, motion capture and animations in research projects in areas such as medicine, archaeology, linguistics, historical reconstructions and museology. 

Friday 10th April 2026, 11.30am CEST

Title: Mytholudics: Games and Myth

Speakers: Dom Ford, University of Bergen

Registration: https://dariah.zoom.us/meeting/register/829zNVouQZKUG0zr7wQmpA

Abstract

Games create worlds made of many different elements, but also of rules, systems and structures for how we act in them. So how can we make sense of them? Mytholudics: Games and Myth lays out an approach to understanding games using theories from myth and folklore. Myth is understood not as an object or a kind of story, but as a way of expressing meaning, a way in which we produce a model for understanding the world and things in it. This talk lays out this approach and how it can help you analyse and conceptualise gameworlds. The framework helps to see games and their worlds in the whole. Stories, gameplay, systems, rules, spatial configurations and art styles can all be considered together as contributing to the meaning of the game.

About the speaker:

Dom Ford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen, as part of the LEAD AI programme. His current project looks at nonplayer characters in games with AI-generated dialogue, how players respond to the use of this technology and how this use may challenge ideas in the philosophy of fiction like intentionality. He is also an editor for Eludamos. Previously he was a postdoc at the University of Bremen, part of the Media and Religion lab in the ZeMKI Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, where he was also the managing editor for gamevironments.

His first book, Mytholudics: Games and Myth, proposes a method for analysing games both as conduits of mythologies within society and as mythological structures in themselves. It’s out now and published by De Gruyter.

He wrote his PhD at the IT University of Copenhagen’s Center for Digital Play between 2019 and 2022, supervised by Hans-Joachim Backe.

Friday 8th May 2026, 11.30am CEST

Title: Feminist Digital Humanities: Intersections in Practice

Speakers: Monika Barget (University of Maastricht), Jenny Bergenmar (University of Gothenburg), & Susan Schreibman (University of Maastricht)

Registration: https://dariah.zoom.us/meeting/register/1Rib0DoaQaKSYM8nwOvOiw

Abstract

In April 2025 Feminist Digital Humanities: Intersections in Practice was published by The University of Illinois Press. It is an edited collection (which is available open access and can be downloaded here) divided into three main sections: Readings, Infrastructures and Pedagogies. The thread that runs through this collection is a theorisation of feminist DH practice as sites of possibility for exploring, exposing, and revaluing marginalized forms of knowledge production through new modes and processes of meaning making. Each chapter also reflects on what it means to be a feminist and a technologist through definitions of feminisms that are brought into conversation with DH scholarship. Feminist DH practices are presented as sites of possibility for exploring, exposing, and revaluing marginalized forms of knowledge production by enacting new modes and processes of meaning making. An overriding focus of the collection is to demonstrate how feminist lenses attuned to issues of intersectionality and gender can uncover structural inequities and present opportunities for social and intellectual change.

This talk will have a three-part focus. The first part will reflect on the collection as a whole, and how it intersects with current feminist thought and DH practice. The second part will explore the Readings section through the chapter Feminist DH: A Historical Perspective Excavating the Lives of Women of the Past by Monika Barget and Susan Schreibman which explores how the Irish digital humanities project Letters 1916–1923 adopted a feminist approach to surface marginalized women’s voices in a heterogeneous historical collection of letters dominated by male voices. The third part will focus on Jenny Bergenmar’s co-authored chapter Infrastructures for Diversity: Feminist and Queer Interventions in Nordic Digital Humanities from the Infrastructures Section, which explores how DH infrastructures in institutional frameworks can make space for feminist, queer, and activist perspectives, methods, and collaborations.

About the speakers:

Monika Barget is an early modern historian and digital humanist specializing in the political history of the eighteenth century, visual cultures, and spatial history. From 2017 to 2018, she contributed to the Letters 1916–1923 and Ignite projects at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Following postdoctoral work in Mainz, she joined the History Department of Maastricht University as an assistant professor in August 2021.

Jenny Bergenmar is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is a literary history scholar who has previously worked with digital scholarly editing and archival materials through digitization and crowdsourcing. She is currently principal investigator of the research infrastructure project QUEERLIT database: Metadata Development and Searchability for LGBTQI Literary Heritage (2021–2023).

Susan Schreibman is a professor of digital arts and culture at Maastricht University and a Co-Director of DARIAH. Her current research projects include: PURE3D2.0 and Contested Memories: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge.

The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud to announce it has signed a Cooperating Partnership agreement with Vilnius University in Vilnius, Lithuania. This strategic partnership positions Lithuania’s leading academic institution as a central hub for digital innovation, bridging advanced technology with the study of culture, communication, and society in the Baltic region. The Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute was also accepted as a DARIAH Cooperating Partner alongside Vilnius University.

A Strategic Leap for Research Networking

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. As a Cooperating Partner, VU joins a network of 24 member countries and numerous partner institutions, filling a critical geographical gap in the European digital research map between Poland and Latvia and strengthening the integration of Baltic research into the continental landscape.

The Vice-Rector of Vilnius University, Dr Artūras Vasiliauskas, commented: “This step reflects Vilnius University’s long-standing openness to international collaboration and its commitment to being an active, trusted partner in Europe’s research ecosystem. By joining DARIAH-EU, we are strengthening our ability to connect Lithuanian scholarship with global academic networks and to respond to societal challenges through innovative, technology-driven research.”

A Transdisciplinary Hub for Digital Innovation

The partnership is spearheaded by the Faculty of Communication, which acts as a unique transdisciplinary connector between technical ICT research and traditional inquiries in the human and social sciences. This ecosystem is defined by a diverse array of specialised research units that apply digital methods for pressing societal issues. The newly established Centre for Communication Influences and Propaganda Research at the Faculty of Communication utilises digital analysis of textual and media resources to investigate strategic narratives and disinformation, while the Connective Research Group has developed an innovative Social Media Archive using knowledge graphs and generative artificial intelligence to explore how the past is remembered and how Lithuanian history and heritage shape contemporary identities. These efforts are complemented by the Faculty’s Mobile Eye-Tracking Laboratory, which investigates reading behaviours and information consumption, and the 3D Digitisation and Digital Research Laboratory, which provides expertise in AI and 3D scanning for urban heritage preservation.

“This partnership recognises the breadth of expertise within our Faculty,” noted Prof. Renata Matkevičienė, the Dean of the Faculty of Communication. “To the European network, with the project activities, we bring significant methodological insights based on results of our previous research, together with innovative technical and technological resources from the mobile eye-tracking laboratory to our work on knowledge graphs and 3D digitisation. This collaboration will expand our already existing multidisciplinary collaboration network and provide our researchers and students with access to an exceptional community of experts, ensuring we remain at the forefront of the digital transformation.”

Leading the Agenda on Digital Practices

Supporting these research capabilities is the Vilnius University Library, a national leader in Open Science. By managing MIDAS, the National Open Access Research Data Archive, and digitising over 50,000 cultural heritage objects annually, the Library ensures robust preservation and access for Lithuania’s documentary heritage.

Associate Professor Ingrida Kelpšienė, Vice-Dean for Projects and Partnerships at the Faculty of Communication, explains: “I  have witnessed firsthand the value of cross-border collaboration with DARIAH, having been involved in the network since its early stages and being part of the Digital Methods and Practices Observatory (DiMPO) working group. It is particularly meaningful to renew Lithuania’s engagement with this international research infrastructure, with our Faculty once again being an active part of the network. DARIAH membership is strategically significant for our academic community, as it strengthens international partnerships, leverages our regional expertise in digital research, and opens new opportunities for collaborative projects, research, and innovation across traditional and emerging fields of scholarship.”

“The Faculty of Communication is uniquely positioned to serve as the connector for this initiative”, adds Prof. Konstantinos (Costis) Dallas, the Scientific Coordinator for the partnership. “We look forward to collaborating fruitfully with the Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute to strengthen the bond between Lithuania and the European digital humanities research space. By combining our methodological leadership in digital practices with our new infrastructures for social media analysis and digital behaviour, we aim to drive the digital research agenda forward across the human and social sciences, not just for the University, but for the wider region.”

The President of the DARIAH-EU Board of Directors, Dr Agiatis Benardou, endorsed the agreement: “We are delighted to welcome Vilnius University to the DARIAH family. The Faculty of Communication has a distinguished history of contributions to the community. Formalising this partnership allows us to deepen our collaboration and leverage VU’s expertise and infrastructure to the benefit of the broader European research landscape.”

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 signed a Cooperating Partnership agreement with the Institute for Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius, Lithuania.

DARIAH is a European research infrastructure that has been operating for more than a decade, with a mission to empower research communities to use digital methods to create, collaborate, and share knowledge about culture and society. Currently, DARIAH brings together 24 member countries across the European Union and maintains partnerships with 20 Cooperating Partner institutions in non-member countries.

“I am pleased to see the DARIAH-EU network expanding and welcoming Lithuanian institutions – the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and Vilnius University. Becoming a Cooperating Partner of the DARIAH European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) enables LLTI to share its accumulated experience while, through collaboration with international partners, gaining new knowledge in digital humanities. I hope that the Institute will actively engage in researchers’ working groups and international projects, bring together Lithuanian institutions involved in the digitisation and research of literature and folklore archives, and contribute to the implementation of the DARIAH-EU mission“, said Prof. Dr. Aušra Martišiūtė-Linartienė, Director of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.

“I believe that this collaboration will not only allow us to update existing research methodologies, develop digital infrastructure, and participate in various international projects, but, most importantly, bring together a community in this field that is responsive to the challenges and trends of the modern digital world,” says one of the DARIAH coordinators at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, dr. Karolina Bagdonė.

A strengthening of Lithuanian heritage in the digital space

LLTI is a state research institute, implementing long-term academic research programs in the fields of early Lithuanian literature, folklore, mythology, modern literature and contemporary writing. The Institute holds a prestigious academic tradition, dating back to 1907, and functions both as a modern research centre and as an institution of national cultural heritage. It is a strong Lithuanian academic publisher and a centre for digitization of immense literary and folk archives. The Institute employs a large number of highly qualified researchers and administers doctoral programmes in Philology and Ethnology.

The Institute possesses a unique research infrastructure that includes the world’s largest and oldest Lithuanian Folklore Archive, the major archive of Lithuanian literary manuscripts, the digital databases of archival materials, and the historical premises of the Vileišiai Palace – a national site of memory. Some of the institute’s archival collections are included into the UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” heritage list.

LLTI’s systematic digitisation efforts, ranging from literary and folklore collections to research databases, directly support the Institute’s mission to preserve and disseminate Lithuanian studies heritage and to strengthen cultural identity. Joining DARIAH-EU will enable these efforts to be further expanded and will integrate Lithuanian studies resources into the European research landscape.

More than 20 years ago, LLTI, together with partners in Lithuania, began developing the Lithuanian Studies Heritage Information System “Aruodai”, which has become a solid foundation for the Folklore Manuscript Database in operation today and widely used by scholars, artists, and the general public. The database provides access to digitised manuscripts, audio recordings, and photographs from the Lithuanian Folklore Archives dating back to the early 20th century, as well as video recordings from later periods. 

Based on these archival sources, a range of widely used electronic resources has also been developed, including the heritage of A. R. Niemi’s Lithuanian folklore collections and sound recordings, “Knygadvaris” created on the basis of the Jonas Basanavičius Library, electronic corpora, and other digitised thematic collections dedicated to riddles, proverbs, sutartinės (traditional polyphonic songs), fairy tales, narrative folklore, folk beliefs, and post-war partisan songs. Alongside these, resources presenting and broadening access to Lithuanian literature are also being developed, such as the Balys Sruoga Archive (1911–1947), www.saltiniai.info, as well as numerous thematic and commemorative digital publications and open-access resources.

As noted by Dr Greta Petruškevičienė, Head of the Lithuanian Folklore Archives, many of these projects were implemented in close collaboration with scholars and IT specialists from Vilnius University. It is therefore especially gratifying that all this accumulated expertise and the resources created will now be opened to the European research community. At the same time, this is an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of digital humanities, along with the benefits and challenges it brings.

“It is deeply exciting to welcome LLTI and Vilnius as Cooperating Partners to DARIAH-EU,” said Edward Pinot Gray, DARIAH’s Officer for National Coordination. “Not only does this expand our network into Lithuania, but our new Lithuanian colleagues bring tangible expertise and tools to DARIAH. I look forward to working with colleagues at LLTI and Vilnius to integrate Lithuanian Arts and Humanities scholars into the DARIAH infrastructure, and we hope, one day as a full Member.” 

For more information on the Cooperating Partners membership in DARIAH, their role, tasks and benefits, have a look at our detailed post here.

In September 2025, DARIAH launched the fifth Working Groups (WG) Funding Scheme Call for the years 2026-2027. This scheme is dedicated to – and open only for – the DARIAH Working Groups, and is intended to support their activities, small-scale projects and innovative ideas to be put forward, implemented, or sustained.

In this call, which was launched in September and was closed in mid November 2025, we received 8 applications overall. The evaluation of these applications was carried out by two reviewers for each proposal, concluding to a reviewers’ meeting in which the winning proposals were agreed among the whole evaluation committee as well as the Board of Directors.

This year, DARIAH awarded 7 WGs with funding to explore innovative ideas, build up their expertise or sustain existing tools and services, dedicating an overall budget of €40.000 to the call.  

The winning projects:

• Performing Arts: Structuring Semantic Knowledge for the Digital Age – Theatralia WG 

This project builds on the previous two project phases which advanced the digital structuring of research in
the Performing Arts. The first (2021–2023) established a state-of-the-art overview and identified the need for a shared, computerized descriptive language to support digital knowledge exchange and enhance scholarly value in the field. The second phase (2024–2025) began developing such a model, resulting in two open-access tools: a Dublin Core-based descriptive model for Performing-Arts archives and a multilingual prototype thesaurus (Version 1) created with OpenTheso (an open-source vocabulary management tool).

This third phase aims to deepen this work by expanding the thesaurus and improving its accessibility. Although Version 1 comprises about one hundred curated English terms, the underlying corpus contains roughly 1,400 multilingual concepts. Phase 3 will involve reviewing, refining, and translating these concepts, with the goal of producing a configured Version 2 containing approximately 250 terms across multiple languages. In parallel, the WG will explore integrating the thesaurus into a user-friendly digital interface, potentially through collaboration with the Croatian DARIAH-HR platform tezaurus.hr, while examining how it may interoperate with the Dublin Core for Performing Arts (a metadata standard for describing cultural-heritage resources).

• Research Data Management Tools and Strategies for Language Diversity – Research Data Management + Multilingual DH WGs

This joint project aims to organise a two full-day workshop on “Research Data Management Tools and Strategies for Language Diversity”. The workshop will bring together researchers in multilingualism, data stewards and educational designers, who will create one to three textual Open Educational Resources (OERs), either as guidelines or case-studies, to be published on DARIAH-Campus. This project aims to explore how linguistically diverse, crosslingual data can be combined with datasheets, data papers, data management plan wizards and semantic artefacts, and how the latter facilitate multilingual data sharing and reuse in digital humanities communities. These OERs will also address CARE principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics), as well as inclusiveness and minority representation.

• Connecting the Collections: A Roadmap for Interoperable Music Linked Data – Artificial Intelligence and Music WG

“Connecting the Collections” is an intensive, Dagstuhl-style seminar designed to strategically relaunch the Artificial
Intelligence and Music (AIM) Working Group. It addresses the critical fragmentation of digital music resources where, despite AI advancements, the field remains hampered by isolated data silos and poor reuse of semantic models. To overcome these barriers, this project convenes a multidisciplinary group of leading experts from the UK, Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Italy, and France for a 3-day participatory workshop dedicated to creating interoperable data ecosystems and promoting the ethical reuse of standards.

The seminar will adopt a co-creation methodology, dissecting four diverse use cases ranging from managing music
archives to large-scale audio analysis. Through structured requirement engineering sessions and roundtable discussions, participants will critically evaluate existing music ontologies and identify specific gaps in implementing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. We will move beyond speculative discussion to draft practical solutions for connecting disparate musical assets via Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Web technologies.

• Workflows for feminist data-linking – Women Writers in History WG

A major issue hampering scholarship on historical women authors, publishers and readers, has been the lack of
standardized identifiers allowing researchers to manipulate and link data, thereby overcoming current digital data silos. This project will theorize and redress this data imbalance by carrying out a pilot to create standardized identifiers for 100-200 historical women who lack them, currently rendering them digitally near-invisible and unfindable.

Starting with a reflection on the current state of the datascape, the WG will identify gaps and patterns in coverage, critically testing different kinds of identifiers for usability and adaptability, and formulating a series of best practices. Collaboration with the DHwiki and BiblioData WGs will be crucial at this stage of the project. The pilot’s starting-point will be data in four databases built or managed by WG project members, RECIRC (Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700), SHEWROTE (Studying Historical Early Women’s Reception: Oeuvres, Texts, Engagements), Texts on the Move and Electronic Enlightenment, which we will comprehensively survey as a first step towards our long-term goal of linking data across datasets, creating a data ecosystem of interoperable databases focusing fully or partly on historical women authors, publishers and readers. In doing so, we will adopt a mixed approach, creating identifiers using a variety of resources, including Wikidata, the CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries) Thesaurus, and VIAF. These experiences will form the basis for a white paper to be submitted to Transformations and a workflow for feminist data linking for the SSH Open Marketplace.

• BIBTRAIN, Bibliographical Data Training Materials – BiblioData WG 

The Bibliodata WG aims to create a set of training materials to help students and practitioners understand how to retrieve, process, and analyse bibliographical data for curatorial and scientific purposes, as well as how to work with specific bibliodata-related tools (such as the AVOBMAT tool for bibliodata analysis, QA Catalogue for metadata quality assessment, OpenCitations toolings, etc). With respect to the individual capacities and expertise of WG members, the materials will cover both general issues related to work with bibliographical data (such as data cleaning, data harmonisation, etc.) and more specific tasks introducing the use of particular software tools, datasets, and workflows. All materials will be made publicly available via DARIAH-Campus.

The BIBTRAIN materials will build on the previous activities of the BDWG, particularly on the findings of the Bibliodata Landscape Analysis Report and the Open Bibliodata project (DARIAH Theme 2022–2024), within which a set of six bibliodata-related workflows was developed and made publicly available via the SSH Open Marketplace. The ambition of the project is to foster and broaden the community of bibliodata curators and researchers by delivering innovative and practical training materials to the interested audience, reflecting the latest development and methodological approaches in the field.

• Bringing together initiatives on new standards and metadata for visual data – Visual Media & Interactivity WG 

The Visual Media and Interactivity DARIAH WG brings together researchers interested in the use and development of methods, tools, infrastructures, and workflows for creating, storing, archiving, annotating, and sharing visual, audiovisual, and 3D content. For the period 2026-2027, the WG is focusing on enhancing the community within DARIAH and scoping opportunities towards the adoption of common platforms, standards and formats through the organisation of a series of online meetings and four face to face workshops to map existing efforts and develop a roadmap for the community.

All researchers exploring visual media corpora in the various disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, and wishing to share their methods, challenges and research outputs, are welcome to join this effort!

• Standardizing and diversifying OER workflows: Templates and best practices – #dariahTeach WG

Open Educational Resources (OER) are vital for accessible, high-quality education and central to the #dariahTeach WG. However, diverse formats and embedded external content often create barriers to reuse and interoperability. This project will organise a hands-on workshop with OER creators from across Europe to co-develop a reusable Markdown (MD) template for DARIAH-Campus. This template will enable smoother offline content creation and include best practices for migrating content from other formats.

Participants will bring case studies from their own work, ensuring the workflow meets actual needs and aligns with the EU’s new skills agenda. We will address aspects of accessibility, including multilinguality, decolonization of concepts and wording, and inclusivity for both contributors and users. We will test the integration of typical DH OER functionalities into the MD template and explore options for collaborative case studies. The template will incorporate insights from other OER formats using Markdown, such as TeachBooks, and will be informed by the #dariahTeach Social Justice Course as a model for a new design framework.

By standardizing DARIAH OER creation and conversion, we aim to:
* reduce technical hurdles for educators and researchers,
* foster collaboration across European institutions,
* and ensure that future DARIAH-Campus resources are consistent, accessible, and reusable.

This funding scheme will run from January 2026 until end of March 2027. The funded projects will be invited to present their project results during the DARIAH Annual Event 2027. Keep an eye on our news section as we will be posting more information on their development. 

The second UK DARIAH day was hosted by the Edinburgh Futures Institute (University of Edinburgh) on Friday 7 November, in collaboration with the five other UK DARIAH partners (King’s College London, University of Brighton, University of Exeter, University of Leeds and the School of Advanced Study, University of London). The event explored the futures of digital research infrastructures in the arts and humanities, with a focus on the current and potential relationships between UK and European infrastructures. It was supported by DARIAH-EU, DISKAH, and the Centre for Data, Culture & Society.

Jennifer Edmond (DARIAH Ireland/Trinity College Dublin) began the day with a keynote that drew on her personal history of engagements with DARIAH across her career to illustrate the crucial impact research infrastructures can have on individual career trajectories. As the current National Coordinator for DARIAH in Ireland, Edmond’s talk demonstrated how effective infrastructure relies on the humans who guide individuals to understand their own potential pathways into larger scale infrastructures and who act as the crucial connective tissue between local, national and international levels.

Edmond’s talk was followed by Sally Chambers’ (DARIAH/British Library) wide-ranging exploration of the different national and regional models of DARIAH membership, demonstrating the importance of adapting models to local contexts and existing national infrastructures. The CLARIAH model used in a number of countries such as Spain and Austria was highlighted, which seeks to combine the strengths of the two most significant European humanities infrastructure projects DARIAH and CLARIN (the Common Language Resources and Tools Infrastructure). 

Speakers leading UK-based digital research infrastructures presented on the aims and focus of a series of distinct yet complementary initiatives. William Nixon from Research Libraries UK (RLUK) discussed their new strategy that seeks to further the organisation’s emphasis on collaboration, open research and digital scholarship. André Piza (Turing) shared work commissioned by the AHRC-funded DataCulture project and undertaken with David Beavan (Turing), Arianna Ciula (KCL) and many others to develop a roadmap for national research software engineering capability in the arts and humanities, in recognition of the ever increasing need for greater collaboration between RSEs and humanities researchers. The final two morning presentations from Karina Rodriguez Echavarria (Brighton) and Eamonn Bell (Durham) focused on AHRC/UKRI-funded initiatives to strengthen training and community-building in relation to high performance computing in the arts and humanities. The DISKAH (Digital Skills in Arts and Humanities) fellowship programme is developing a cohort of arts and humanities researchers engaged in large-scale computational methods, while the CCP-AHC (Collaborative Computational Project for Arts, Humanities and Culture) is focused on the sustainable development and discoverability of software, pipelines and workflows for arts and humanities research.

The discussion following the morning’s presentations reflected on the diverse possible future routes to strengthening the connections between UK and European digital research infrastructures. Given the existing digital research connections between the UK and Ireland, particularly through the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association, Edmond highlighted the potential for exploring a UK-Ireland regional DARIAH coordination model with an emphasis also on strengthening collaboration across the UK’s four nations.

Over lunch, a community-led showcase featured posters and presentations on a rich variety of activities and contributions from DARIAH UK cooperating partners and beyond. These ranged from discipline-specific initiatives (e.g. a project on digital literary studies) to cross-disciplinary publication and training platforms (e.g. Journal of Open Humanities Data, RESHAPED), and from national mapping exercises of infrastructures to underpinning practices of software engineering processes and infrastructures connected to digital accessibility.

In the afternoon, David Selway spoke on behalf of the iDAH (Infrastructure for Digital Arts and Humanities) programme at the AHRC on their current approach to digital research infrastructures. His talk demonstrated the breadth of recent investments, such as the RICHeS (Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science) programme, the Enact Practice Research Data Service and support for the work of the Software Sustainability Institute. Selway emphasised the ongoing nature of the programme and the importance of consultation with the community on its future shape and development.

The final workshop session of the day provided space for collective imaginings of future digital infrastructures. Drawing from their project on Infrastructure Futures for Digital Cultural Heritage, Melissa Terras and Jen Ross (Edinburgh) encouraged us to be hopeful and creative in our infrastructure discussions. Workshop participants were given the opportunity to discuss a selection of thought-provoking scenarios as prompts for reflecting on the current and future design of digital infrastructures. The workshop highlighted the diversity of potential infrastructure futures and the value of speculative design in prompting us to think beyond existing models and constraints.

In sum, the day provided a valuable opportunity to reflect on both existing digital infrastructure developments and to imagine potential futures. The day’s talks demonstrated the breadth of recent infrastructure investments in a range of digital research initiatives for the arts and humanities in the UK. From an open research perspective, the event reinforced the view that openness, interoperability, and recognition for data and software work are foundational to building sustainable and connected digital research infrastructures. At the same time, discussions throughout the day foregrounded the importance of the interconnectivity of infrastructures and of events like the DARIAH day for strengthening and forging connections. For just as we need to think beyond local institutional infrastructures in our national context, we must also be conscious of the risks of nationally siloed infrastructures and of the ways knowledge sharing and connections at the international level can further amplify the impact and reach of the UK’s digital research infrastructures.

Click to view the programme.

Authors: Naomi Wells (School of Advanced Study), Lisa Otty (University of Edinburgh), Arianna Ciula (King’s College London), Barbara McGillivray (King’s College London)

This post is republished from The Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture & Society website.

DARIAH is delighted to publish the latest Spotlight article Toward digital descriptive models for the performing arts: Spotlight on the Working Group Theatralia. This article is part of the DARIAH Spotlight campaign, a monthly series that focuses on digital scholarship within the DARIAH network.

Written by Cécile Chantraine Braillon, La Rochelle Université (France) and Anamarija Žugić Borić, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (Croatia), this article presents the work conducted within the Theatralia Working Group to address the growing digital transformation of the performing arts. Bringing together around 30 scholars, GLAM professionals, and artists, the group fosters interdisciplinary research on digitization, digital performance, digital methodologies, and archiving in the performing arts.

After an initial phase dedicated to identifying the new challenges and emerging needs raised by the performing arts’ adaptation to the digital turn, the group underscored a key epistemological issue: the need for a shared computational language to describe and represent the field, enabling meaningful data exchange and generating real scholarly value. In its second phase, Theatralia therefore refocused its efforts on refining such digital description models and supporting their integration into broader archival infrastructures. This Spotlight delves into the issues identified and the task of building and further developing a thesaurus for performing arts.

This article is part of DARIAH’s latest outreach campaign, DARIAH Spotlight, which makes research within the DARIAH network more visible. This monthly series will showcase digital scholarship in the humanities, from both DARIAH Working Groups and DH projects within the DARIAH network. Follow this campaign for more Spotlight articles.

The SSH Open Marketplace Editorial Board is happy to invite you to a series of 8 hands-on workshops to strengthen FAIR and digital research skills.

Click here to see the flyer for the events. | Save the dates and register here!

The Social Sciences and Humanities Open Marketplace is a discovery portal which pools and contextualises resources for Social Sciences and Humanities research communities: tools, services, training materials, datasets, publications and workflows.

The Marketplace highlights and showcases solutions and research practices for every step of the SSH research data life cycle.

Training Series Learning objectives 

1. Understand Open Science, FAIR and CARE principles in practice
   Participants will be able to explain the Open Science paradigm and the FAIR and CARE principles, and assess their implications for responsible research data management across the full data lifecycle in the arts and humanities, social sciences, language sciences, and GLAM-related research.
2. Navigate and critically use the SSH Open Marketplace
   Participants will be able to confidently navigate the SSH Open Marketplace to discover, evaluate, and select relevant tools, services, datasets, workflows, and training materials for their research needs.
3. Integrate digital resources into research workflows
   Participants will be able to incorporate SSH Open Marketplace resources into discipline-specific research workflows, enhancing transparency, reproducibility, and efficiency in arts and humanities, social sciences, language sciences, and GLAM-related research.
4. Contribute to and curate resources
   Participants will be able to contribute their own communities’ high-quality resources to the SSH Open Marketplace by applying editorial guidelines, metadata standards, and best practices for documentation, interoperability, and reuse, as well as reuse Marketplace resources to support reproducible and transparent research practices.
5. Apply domain-specific standards, resources and research practices
   Participants will be able to document, share, and reuse domain-specific research workflows, data, and tools within arts and humanities (DARIAH), social sciences (CESSDA), language sciences (CLARIN), cultural heritage contexts, thereby fostering interoperability, FAIR compliance, and sustainable knowledge exchange within national and European research infrastructures
6. Leverage the SSH Open Marketplace for community-specific applications
   Participants will be able to design and implement customized application scenarios by utilizing the SSH Open Marketplace to create, curate, and disseminate tailored resource lists or complex catalogs that meet the specific needs and standards of their respective research communities.

Overview of sessions and learning objectives per session

Training session	Learning objectives
20 February: FAIR, CARE & Open Science Principles	1. Explain the core principles of Open Research and their relevance for SSH research practices. 2. Distinguish between FAIR and CARE principles and understand their complementary roles in data governance. 3. Identify key FAIR-compliant research infrastructures relevant to SSH research. 4. Assess the implications of Open Science requirements for data management planning and project design. 5. Apply FAIR and CARE principles to a concrete research use case or project scenario.
20 March: Introduction to SSH Open Marketplace	1. Describe the purpose, scope, and added value of the SSH Open Marketplace for SSH research. 2. Navigate the SSH Open Marketplace interface to locate resources (tools, services, datasets, training materials, and workflows). 3. Use search and filtering functions to identify relevant resources for a specific research question. 4. Understand how the Marketplace connects community use-cases to European SSH research infrastructures. 5. Select appropriate resources from the Marketplace for early-stage or exploratory research tasks.
17 April: Making the most of the SSH Open Marketplace	1. Explore and differentiate advanced resource types such as workflows. 2. Integrate Marketplace resources into existing research workflows. 3. Evaluate the quality, relevance, and reuse potential of Marketplace entries using metadata and relations. 4. Enrich existing Marketplace records by adding metadata, links, and contextual information. 5. (Re)use Marketplace resources to support reproducible and transparent research practices.
15 May: Contributing to the SSH Open Marketplace	1. Understand the role of community contributions in sustaining the SSH Open Marketplace. 2. Add new tools, datasets, workflows, or training materials to the Marketplace. 3. Apply editorial guidelines and quality standards for resource curation. 4. Use metadata schemas and controlled vocabularies to improve interoperability and discoverability. 5. Critically review and improve existing Marketplace entries to enhance reuse and FAIRness. 6. Understand programmatic access and re-use of marketplace material via API and WordPress plug-ins.
19 June: Thematic Art and Humanities	1. Identify DARIAH services and workflows relevant to arts and humanities research. 2. Understand how arts and humanities research workflows are represented in the SSH Open Marketplace. 3. Apply DARIAH tools and workflows (e.g. ATRIUM) to concrete research scenarios. 4. Integrate heterogeneous data types typical of arts and humanities research into FAIR-aligned workflows. 5. Share and document arts and humanities workflows for reuse within the SSH community.
18 September: Thematic GLAM institutions	1. Understand the specific characteristics and challenges of cultural heritage and GLAM data. 2. Identify relevant tools, standards, and services for GLAM data in the SSH Open Marketplace. 3. Apply FAIR principles to digitised and born-digital cultural heritage data. 4. Integrate GLAM datasets into interdisciplinary SSH research workflows. 5. Promote reuse and sustainability of cultural heritage data through documentation and sharing practices.
16 October: Thematic language data	1. Identify CLARIN services and standards for managing and analysing language data. 2. Understand FAIR and legal/ethical challenges specific to language data (e.g. sensitive or personal data). 3. Use the SSH Open Marketplace to discover language resources, tools, and workflows. 4. Integrate CLARIN tools into linguistic research workflows. 5. Prepare and document language datasets for reuse within national and European infrastructures.
20 November: Thematic Social sciences	1. Identify CESSDA services, standards, and tools relevant to social science research. 2. Understand best practices for managing, documenting, and sharing social science data. 3. Use the SSH Open Marketplace to locate CESSDA-related datasets and services. 4. Apply FAIR and ethical principles to quantitative and qualitative social science data. 5. Connect social science research workflows to European data services and infrastructures.

FAIR-by-design learning materials

The training series are conceptualised following the FAIR-by-design methodology developed in skills4EOSC (Filiposka et al. 2024), which consists in taking a systematic approach for conceptualizing each training session, e.g. defining the target audience, the learning objectives and the means to achieve them in each training session, publishing the materials and guides about how to use them, among others. FAIR learning materials enable the reuse of the materials both by learners and by trainers.

Target audience

The workshop series is aimed at a broad audience with links to the social sciences and humanities – from beginners to experienced researchers and practitioners who want to contribute their perspectives or benefit from the experiences of others.

More about the SSH Open Marketplace

The SSH Open Marketplace is:

• a discovery portal, to foster serendipity in digital methods
• an aggregator of useful and well curated resources
• a catalogue, contextualising resources
• an entry point in the EOSC for the Social Sciences and Humanities researchers

The SSH Open Marketplace is not:

• a repository. Nothing is hosted in the SSH Open Marketplace. Workflow content type can be hosted, but this is an exception.
• a data catalogue. The goal is not to collect all the SSH datasets, but selected datasets are indexed to support the contextualisation (dataset mentioned in a publication or used in a training material for example).
• a commercial Marketplace. There is nothing to sell in the SSH Open Marketplace. Commercial software/services can be referenced

DARIAH is delighted to publish the fifth Spotlight article Insights from the ATRIUM Skillset Assessment and Gap Analysis Report. This article is part of the DARIAH Spotlight campaign, a monthly series that focuses on digital scholarship within the DARIAH network.

Written by Maria Ilvanidou, Scientific Associate at ATHENA RC and Athens University of Economics and Business, this article presents the findings of the ATRIUM Skillset Assessment Survey, conducted within the ATRIUM project, to understand the skills researchers already have, the ones they’re missing, and the training support they need to work confidently with digital tools and services in the ATRIUM Catalogue. The findings were analyzed and presented in the ATRIUM Skillset Assessment and Gap Analysis Report published in August 2025.

Strengthening digital skills ensures more equitable access to research infrastructures and better data and research practices across languages, media and disciplines. For ATRIUM, training is not just an optional extra but a central strategy to enable researchers to use the services available to them. The Skillset Assessment and Gap Analysis report offers a detailed, evidence-based picture of the skills researchers already have and the areas they need more support. Its insights are relevant beyond ATRIUM, contributing to ongoing discussions and efforts in digital capacity building across the wider AHSS community.

This article is part of DARIAH’s latest outreach campaign, DARIAH Spotlight, which makes research within the DARIAH network more visible. This monthly series will showcase digital scholarship in the humanities, from both DARIAH Working Groups and DH projects within the DARIAH network. Follow this campaign for more Spotlight articles.

We are pleased to announce that SSHOC’s activities in 2026 will be led by newly elected Sally Chambers (from DARIAH ERIC – Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) as Chair, and Vania Virgili (from E-RIHS ERIC – European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science) as Vice-Chair. This decision was taken by the SSHOC Governing Board during their meeting on 27 November 2025.

The Governing Board continues to be composed of the ERICs from the ESFRI Social Sciences & Humanities domain: CESSDA, CLARIN, DARIAH, EHRI, E-RIHS, ESS, and SHARE, together with ESFRI Projects GGP, GUIDE, OPERAS and RESILIENCE.

As the newly elected coordinators of the SSH Open Cluster Governing Board, Sally Chambers and Vania Virgili will serve voluntarily in 2026, coordinating the SSHOC Cluster. The Cluster brings together 20 members from research organisations, data archives, funding agencies, and the national nodes of the cluster’s infrastructures. They will also represent SSHOC in communications with external bodies such as the European Commission (EC), ERIC Forum, and the EOSC Association, as well as act as liaisons with the EU-wide science clusters initiative OSCARS.

SSHOC’s governance bridges the full breadth of the research infrastructure landscape in the humanities and social sciences, including the complementary contributions of heritage science. The involvement of E-RIHS at the leadership level is especially significant, as E-RIHS recently became an ERIC (on 28 March 2025), and the cluster is proactively giving space for newly established ERICs to take leadership roles. This signals a stronger commitment to fully integrating cultural heritage expertise into the overall SSH data ecosystem. 

Sally Chambers will be taking on the Chair role after a year of acting as Vice-Chair of SSHOC:  “I am grateful to follow on from Darja Fišer (from CLARIN-ERIC) as the next Chair of the SSHOC Governing Board in 2026, in what will be a crucial year for Research Infrastructures. In the coming months, SSHOC will need to navigate the emerging landscape of Research and Technology Infrastructures, advocate for the strategic importance of the SSH RIs in the next Framework Programme, as well as understand our role in the recently launched EOSC Federation. I am delighted to join forces with Vania Virgili in her new role as Vice-Chair, to address these challenges through our shared commitment to strengthening collaboration across social sciences, humanities and now heritage science infrastructures.”

“As a newly established ERIC, taking on the Vice-Chair role in SSHOC is, for me, a meaningful recognition that heritage science has a place at the European core of research infrastructures. I am grateful that SSHOC has, over the years, served as a vital forum for exchanging experiences and tackling shared challenges. As Vice‑Chair, I am committed to ensuring balanced representation across disciplines, supporting the Chair, and encouraging other SSH research infrastructures to step forward as leaders in future cycles. With E‑RIHS now a full ERIC, I look forward to contributing heritage science expertise to SSHOC’s mature cluster, building on past achievements and strengthening collaboration to support and represent the broader SSHOC community across the social sciences and humanities,” said Vania Virgili in her speech. 

The new Chair and Vice-Chair take on their roles as of 1st January 2026, where one of their first tasks will be to present the SSHOC Annual Plan for 2026. 

This post is republished from the SSHOC website.