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

Have you been meaning to set up an appointment to ask about research data management for your project, an aspect of your research workflow, or a specific DH tool or method? Visit one of our drop-in sessions and we will help you on the spot! No need to make an appointment!

The sessions are designed to support researchers, students, and staff members in all areas of digital scholarship. The initiative is a collaboration between Artes Research, DH-support staff and researchers at the Faculty of Arts, and ICTS at the Faculty of Arts.

Don’t have a question about any of the above but want to learn more about DH? No problem! Come and use our space for co-working! It’s a great moment to develop digital skills by starting a Programming Historian tutorial, for instance!

Everyone is welcome to attend, you do not need to register!

Stop by on one of the following dates and we will be glad to help you:

• 29/01/2026: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis
• 19/02/2026: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis
• 19/03/2026: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis
• 28/04/2026: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis
• 26/05/2026: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis
• 25/06/2026: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis

The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) team recently organized the 7th annual gathering of the Canadian Australian Partnership for Open Scholarship (CAPOS) with the theme “Re-Defining Open Social Scholarship in […]

Are you interested in presenting your work at the Open Science Day?

The Open Science Day is organized for and by researchers at KU Leuven and the KU Leuven Association, as an opportunity to take part in the discussion about Open Science. Researchers can showcase their own Open Science efforts, shed a light on difficulties they might encounter or share experiences and solutions.

Indeed, Open Science is an integral part of today’s research. It encompasses a wide range of practices and outputs across all stages of the research lifecycle. For instance, researchers share their publications via repositories, publish in Open Access journals, and disseminate early findings through preprints. They make their data FAIR, preregister their research protocols, and engage the public through Citizen Science initiatives.

Challenges include selecting the most appropriate channel for publishing research, considering the economic implications of this choice, as well as managing the learning curve and time investment required to implement certain Open Science principles. At the same time, researchers must navigate various considerations, including GDPR compliance, intellectual property rights, and research security. KU Leuven is committed to Open Science, guided by the principle: “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.”

Many things to discuss! Submit your proposal on the Open Science website.

In short

• For who: This call is intended to researchers of the KU Leuven Association.
• Formats: presentations (+/- 15 minutes, depending on submissions), posters, workshop. Other contribution types may be considered by the scientific committee.
• Language: English
• Submission: submissions can be made through the website
• Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2026 (23:59 CET)
• Event date: 6 May 2026

RDM covers a wide range of subjects, with extensive information that requires practical implementation. Within KU Leuven, there are training sessions specifically designed to cultivate practical RDM skills. For researchers within the field of Humanities and Social Sciences, we recommend this upcoming training session to get yourself acquainted with RDM.

These events are only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff

Program

Research data management (RDM) refers to how you handle your data during and after your research project to ensure they are well organized, structured, of high quality and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). During this session you will learn best practices for the management of research data according to the FAIR data principles. We consider the technical, legal, and ethical aspects of research data, secure storage of materials, documentation and metadata, research data sharing, reusing data shared by others, and more. This solid grounding in basic RDM skills will help you make informed decisions on how to handle your research data. Additionally, you will learn how to write and maintain your own Data Management Plan (DMP). 

The training consists of two parts: 

• A short general introduction on Research Data Management  (20’ – 25’)  
• Followed by small interactive group sessions, where participants dicuss their Data Management Plan (DMP), under the guidance of an RDM expert.

Practicalities

• When: December 1, 2025 from 14:00 to 16:00
• Where: Online
• For who: This training is mainly aimed at doctoral researchers, preferably at the start of their PhD or project.
• Price and registration: Free but mandatory
• More info: Click here

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers, students and staff.

In March 2026, KU Leuven Libraries and the Faculty of Arts will organize the second edition of the BiblioTech Hackathon!

What is a hackathon? It is an event that is usually organized over a short period of time where participants come together in small groups and work intensively on a creative digital project or towards some digital end. In the case of BiblioTech, KU Leuven researchers, students, or staff will be divided into small groups and will work specifically on one of the datasets prepared (by LIBIS) for the hackathon. The groups will be guided by at least one group leader and will be able to rely on the help of an expert pool comprised of people who have specific technical knowledge and skills. The groups are free to follow their creative inspiration but must apply some digital approaches or tools to the dataset to produce an end result that will be presented in the form of a short presentation and a poster at the closing event of the hackathon.

Who are we looking for? One of the amazing benefits of hackathons is that they allow many different people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets to come together and to learn from one another. This is our goal for BiblioTech! We welcome applications from researchers at all stages of their careers, motivated students, and also KU Leuven staff members. Digital skills are not a must, but a willingness to learn about digital approaches definitely is. The hackathon should be a fun and engaging experience, and each participant should find themselves with new skills and perspectives at the end.

What about the data? The 2026 edition of the BiblioTech Hackathon is going places! Participants will have the option to work with two datasets both focused on the experience of travel. The first dataset comes from KU Leuven Libraries digitized collections and features historical picture postcards. The second dataset comprises historical travelogues. This combination of image, metadata, and textual materials provides many opportunities for the application of DH methods. We are all excited to see where this data leads you! 

Practical details

The hackathon will span 10 days and will take place from Monday 16 March until Thursday 26 March. In addition to the working period of the hackathon, there will be a pre-hackathon brainstorming event where participants “Meet the Data, Meet the People,” prior to the start of the hackathon, a training day to learn how to use the infrastructure (ManGO and HPC service), and a closing event where the teams’ projects are presented.

• When: Mark your calendars for the following dates:
  • Application Deadline: 5 January 2026 (23:59 CET)
  • Pre-Hackathon Brainstorm | Meet the Data, Meet the People: 12 March 2026
  • Infrastructure Training: 13 March 2026
  • Hackathon Working Period: 16–26 March 2026
  • Hackathon Closing Event: 26 March 2026
  • from Monday 13 March until Thursday 23 March
• Where: Leuven (see above for more details)
• For whom: We welcome applications from researchers at all stages of their careers, motivated students, and also KU Leuven staff members. Digital skills are not a must, but a willingness to learn about digital approaches definitely is.
• Price: free
• Registration: Already convinced and want to take part? Great! Submit an application here. The deadline to apply is 5 January 2026 (23:59 CET).  We look forward to hacking with you!

Want to see further details? Check out the BiblioTech Hackathon website for the most current information.

The DARIAH Annual Event 2026 will take place on May 26th to May 29th in Rome, Italy. Our host for this year’s event is CNR: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. May 26th will be a day for DARIAH internal meetings, followed by the main conference on May 27th to May 29th.

This year’s event will explore the topic of Digital Arts and Humanities With and For Society: Building Infrastructures of Engagement.

Venue

Università degli Studi Roma Tre – Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Via Ostiense, 234, 00146 Roma RM
More information on how to reach the venue and a list of suggested hotels will be published on the annual event website soon.

Call for Papers

The theme of DARIAH’s 2026 Annual Event is to explore digitally-enabled research through a public and participatory lens, focusing on who our research is for, what are its social and public benefits, and how research can serve to create new dialogues within the public sphere. We seek to foster exchanges on how digital infrastructures, networks and collaborative methods can enable and sustain forms of scholarship that are open, flexible and socially responsive. A way to frame this is through the concept of hybridity: an intermingling of ‘disciplines, technological and cultural practices’ which embed within them the goal of connectivity. This may be connectivity of the university or memory institutions with society through collaborative and joint engagements, or it might be providing alternative spaces for/where people can connect and interact through a hybrid network of physical and technology-mediated encounters to co-construct knowledge.’

Whether through scholarly reflections, concrete case studies, theoretical contributions, or policy considerations, this year we seek to explore how digital, social and institutional infrastructures can support engaged research, and nurture generosity, participation and shared creativity in the digital arts and humanities.

We welcome contributions on a variety of topics, including but not limited to:

• Infrastructures of engagement: designing open, inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable platforms
• New models of collaboration across academia, memory institutions, and society
• Pedagogies of engagement and public-facing (digital) humanities education
• Mapping engagement: Evaluating and evidencing public value and impact in digital research
• Preservation, stewardship, and resilience in digital knowledge infrastructures
• Co-creation, citizen science, public and participatory humanities, and community-driven, engaged scholarship
• Policy and governance frameworks for sustaining participatory infrastructures
• Creative and artistic practices as forms of public engagement and dialogue
• The role of digital archives and participatory practices in shaping collective memory and identity
• Ethical and sustainable approaches to participatory digital-enabled  research
• Implementing CARE: Designing digital infrastructures that foster trust, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility
• Intercultural and transnational perspectives on public digital humanities
• Research infrastructure as critical Infrastructure – strategies to build resilient infrastructure for engagement and public good
• Policy and governance frameworks for sustaining participatory infrastructures

Keynote speaker

We are happy to announce that Andreas Fickers, director of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), 3rd Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Luxembourg and head of its Digital History Lab, will give a keynote speech on “Multimodality as a means for multivocality? Transmedia storytelling and the challenges of shared authority in digital public humanities” at the DARIAH Annual Event 2026.

Important dates

(Extended) Deadline for Call for Papers: December 22, 2025 January 8, 2026
Registration opens: February 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance: Late February, 2026

Visit the Annual Event website for more information on the event.

We are pleased to announce the next talk in the ETCL Nuts and Bolts series, which will take place on Thursday, November 6th, to mark World Digital Preservation Day. This […]

On October 9th and 10th, ETCL team members Ray Siemens, Britt Amell, and Alan Colin-Arce participated at the First Canadian Conference on Open Science and Open Scholarship at Concordia University […]

DARIAH-EU is proud to announce a new initiative titled “DARIAH Beyond Europe”, a curated series of online presentations aimed at highlighting the work of our valued extra-European Cooperating Partners and fostering new synergies within the DARIAH community. The series will take place throughout the academic year 2025-2026, with each session dedicated to a current extra-European Cooperating Partner. 

DARIAH Beyond Europe: Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University
Thursday, October 30 at 14:00-15:30 CET

Our first session, highlighting our longstanding partnership with the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, will be held on October 30th from 14:00 Central European Time (9:00 Eastern Daylight Savings Time). It will be presented by the Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Ermolaev and Dr. Bryan Winston, Digital Scholarship expert at the Princeton University Library. The CDH has been a DARIAH Cooperating Partner since January 2021, and since 2023 has been co-organising a series of summer workshops with DARIAH-EU and Athens University of Economics and Business.

Sessions will last 90 minutes, with time for an introduction from DARIAH, a presentation from our Cooperating Partner, followed by discussion and questions. The Cooperating Partner will have the opportunity to introduce their institution and research activities, particularly its work in the field of digital arts and humanities, and lay out how they are already collaborating, or hope to collaborate more deeply, with DARIAH members and stakeholders. Future sessions are in the process of being scheduled and will be announced in the coming weeks. 

The goal of the “DARIAH Beyond Europe” series is to provide a platform for mutual exchange and to enhance the visibility and integration of our non-European collaborators within the broader DARIAH family.

Please register to join our meeting and learn more about our extra-European Partners, and how DARIAH can help build meaningful scientific collaboration across borders!

3 days- 3 Webinars

This edition of Open Access Week is dedicated to researchers and their need for guidance through open access publication models and projects.

Join together, take action, and raise awareness about the importance of open knowledge sharing

Program

Monday October 20|12:30-13:30: 

• Theme: OPEN ACCESS TO PUBLICATIONS IN HORIZON EUROPE
• Speaker: Victoria Tsoukala (Policy Officer – European Commission – Unit A4- Open Science & Research Infrastructures)
• Registration

This session will explore the Horizon Europe Open Access rules and provide practical insights into their implementation. We will discuss how project officers are trained, which units are responsible, common questions from stakeholders, relevant statistics, lessons learned, and key takeaways for the next program cycle. We also anticipate questions and feedback from researchers who are applying these rules in practice. Their experiences will help enrich the discussion, and we hope the webinar will serve as a platform for sharing advice, best practices, and challenges.

Wednesday October 22|12:30-13:30: 

• Theme: HOW TO RETAIN CONTROL OVER YOUR PUBLICATIONS IN THE AGE OF AI ?
• Speaker: Mr. Joris Deene, Everest Advocaten, legal advisor SA&S
• Registration

As an academic author, navigating copyright in the era of Open Access can be challenging. In this session, you will learn how to strategically manage and retain your rights before, during, and after publication. We provide you with concrete tools and legal insights to maximize the impact of your work.

After this session, you will be able to:

• Choose and apply the right Creative Commons license for your specific goals.
• Understand and exercise your statutory right of secondary publication under Belgian law.
• Implement a rights retention strategy to secure your author’s rights before signing a publishing agreement.
• Navigate the challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in academic publishing, focusing on copyright implications and publisher policies.

Friday October 24|12:30-14:00: 

• Theme: DIAMOND OPEN ACCESS
• Speakers : Clément Dessy (FNRS Research Associate- ULB, co-editor of the journal COnTEXTES ), Geoffrey Compère (FNRS Research Director- ULB, senior editor of Scipost Physics), Jonathan Dumont (PhD – Project Manager – ULiège Library)
• Registration

In response to growing concerns about equity and accessibility in scholarly publishing, an increasing number of researchers are advocating for the establishment of Diamond Open Access journals, which provide unrestricted access to research outputs for readers and enable authors to publish without incurring Article Processing Charges (APCs), thereby fostering inclusivity and the democratization of knowledge.

The webinar speakers will present complementary perspectives on Diamond Open Access publishing, including founding a new journal, converting an existing one, and serving as a senior editor on a Diamond Open Access platform.

Practicalities

• When: October 20-26, 2025 with webinars on 20, 22 and 24 October
• Where: Online
• For who: Anyone who needs guidance through open access publication models and projects.
• Price and registration: Free but mandatory.
• More info: Click here

These events are only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff

PhD Researchers at KU Leuven, ready to plan your next training? Willing to learn more about Open Science? Join us on 23 October for the Open Science Discovery. You can participate in the morning session, in an afternoon workshop, or both.

Program

Morning: Open Science Discovery
Explore key themes like reproducible research, Citizen Science, and how to implement Open Science in your own work. Join online or in-person!

This training is an opportunity to learn more about different Open Science principles and how they contribute to high-quality research. Special attention will be paid to the reproducibility of research and to Citizen Science as a means to create a connection with society. This session includes a workshop during which participants will explore in small groups how Open Science can be implemented in practice. This is followed by a discussion on potential challenges as well as strategies on how to overcome them.

Afternoon: Hands-on Workshops
Choose your session:

• Peer Review: A key element of the publication process, essential for validating research.
• Preregistration: Learn how preregistration supports research integrity by distinguishing between exploratory and confirmatory research.
• Data Sharing: Explore the concept of FAIR data and responsible sharing, guided by the principle “as open as possible, as restricted as necessary.”

Practicalities

• When: October 23, 2025 from 09h30 to 18h00
• Where: Hybrid (on-site sessions at Kasteelpark Arenberg (Thermotechnical Institute & MTM)
• For who: Training targeted at PhD researchers, but other researchers and support staff are welcome.
• Price and registration: Free but mandatory. Click here to register. Certificate of participation included.
• More info: Open Science helpdesk

Are you a Digital Humanities student or early career researcher in Belgium who would like to discuss DH with other early career researchers in the Belgian DH community? If so, you might be interested in joining the DH Virtual Discussion Group for ECRs!

The DH Virtual Discussion Group is a joint initiative organized by individuals at multiple Belgian institutions. We strive to involve speakers from all Belgian institutions and encourage participation from all those who are interested in DH and are located at any Belgian institution. This year, the core organizers are Leah Budke (KU Leuven Libraries Artes), Tom Gheldof (KU Leuven, CLARIAH-VL+), Paavo van der Eecken (University of Antwerp), and Loren Verreyen (University of Antwerp). Over the past years, the series has become a regular event. The fall 2025 edition proudly marks our eleventh term.

Our first two sessions this fall will continue the “under-the-hood” format, which entails a volunteer from our community providing a thirty-minute overview of a digital project implementing a given tool, approach, or platform. This is not meant to be a polished research presentation, or to present findings or results, but rather to give our community a behind-the-scenes look at how decisions were made and why specific tools were chosen or developed. The hope is also that this presenter will give attendees some ideas about how to get started implementing a specific tool or workflow, and that they can also answer questions or contribute to a discussion on other projects in our community that might be using similar methodologies or addressing similar issues. This “under-the-hood” session format allows us to have focused discussions around a specific project where we can learn from each other in an informal way. In addition, by implementing this format we can maintain the low threshold for contributing and engaging in the conversations.

Our final session will be a round table session during which 3-4 members of our community chat with us about their experience doing a PhD with a Digital Humanities component.

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The following sessions are on the schedule for the fall 2025 semester (details will be updated as confirmed):

Session 1
Monday 20 October, 15h-16h30 CEST via Teams
Speaker(s): Theodora Rontzova, KU Leuven
Title: Cultural Heritage in Virtual Worlds – the IMPULSE Project
Abstract: My presentation will introduce IMPULSE, a project that aims to enhance accessibility to digitized cultural heritage collections through immersive technology, fostering diverse narrative and public engagement. Over the course of three years, IMPULSE will enhance accessibility to digitized cultural content, optimize streamline digitization processes in the three focus areas of education, artistic creation and CCSIs, develop legal frameworks to mitigate risks and barriers in utilizing cultural heritage data, and foster collaborative creation on immersive platforms. My presentation will provide an overview of the most recent developments within the different Work Packages of the project, with focus on the findings of the two recent workshops in Leuven and in Malta. I will share insights from the development of the virtual platform that will lead to the project’s final Hackathon later this year, and I will finally invite participants to engage with our Community of Practice.

Session 2
Monday 17 November, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): Sara Budts, VUB
Title: Finding Patterns in Lottery Rhymes of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries with and without AI
Abstract: This presentation explores the patterns in lottery rhymes produced in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries, with a focus on the rhymes written by women. The lottery was a popular fundraising event in the Low Countries. Lottery rhymes, personal messages attached to the lottery tickets, provide a valuable source for historians. We collected more than 11,000 digitised short texts from five lotteries held between 1446 and 1606. We have used GysBERT, a language model of historical Dutch, to identify distinctively male and female discourses in the lottery rhymes corpus. Although the model pointed us to some interesting patterns, it also showed that lottery rhymes written by men and women do not radically differ from each other. This is consistent with insights from premodern women’s history which stresses that women worked within societal, and in this case literary, conventions, sometimes subverting them, sometimes adapting them, sometimes adopting them unchanged.

Session 3 – Round Table Session
Monday 15 December, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): To be confirmed
Session Description: This session features insights from 3-4 PhD researchers in our network who are working with DH methods. The session is designed to be free-flowing and informal, but you can expect the following avenues of discussion: (1) how the researcher became interested or started integrating DH methods in their research, (2) the challenges faced when learning new DH skills, (3) important resources that have helped throughout this process, (4) other challenges encountered related to the perception or acceptance of DH, and (5) specific benefits that DH methods have offered for the researcher’s work.

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There are an increasing number of conferences, workshops, and funding opportunities in DH, and we would like to ensure that you are aware of them. We will start every session with a moment for individuals to share news about upcoming lectures, workshops, seminars, and conferences. We have a corresponding Slack group where we also share these opportunities both during the discussion group meetings and in between. The link to join the Slack group is included in every email sent out to the mailing list, so watch for it there or send us an email to request access.

If you would like to register or invite other colleagues to join, please complete the registration form for the mailing list here. Please note, if you have received emails from us about the Discussion Group in the past, it means you are already on our mailing list. In that case, there is no need to register again—you will receive the emails with the MS Teams link and any additional information on the day of the session. Additionally, you will also receive updates on upcoming sessions including further details about speakers and the “under-the-hood” presentation topics. 

Are you a frequent attendee of the DH Virtual Discussion Group and would like a low-threshold way to become more involved in the organization? We are looking for ambassadors to promote the group within their university networks. If this might be a role you would like to take on, get in touch and we can tell you more!

We look forward to seeing you this fall!

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

The Artes Research team from KU Leuven Libraries Artes and the ABAP council will kick off the new academic year with a special “How Do You Do (It)?” (HDYDI) session dedicated to research data workflows. This special session will coincide with the start of the Digital Scholarship Module taught by the Artes Research team. It will take place on Thursday 6 November, 14:00-16:30, in the Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven).

Everyone is welcome to attend, you do not need to register!

Program

14:00-15:00

To help you through the afternoon slump, we will start with coffee and cookies which will be served in the main entrance hall of the Erasmushuis.

15:00-16h30

We will then move up to the 8^th floor (Justus Lipsiuszaal) to start the session which will feature talks from researchers at the Faculty of Arts who outline their research workflows: how do they approach their research, what tools do they use, with what kind of data are they working, etc. We will get a behind-the-scenes look from:

• Tim Debroyer (Cultural History since 1750)
• Lauren Ottaviani (English Literature)
• Sinem Bilican (Interpreting Studies)

There will be lots of time for questions and getting to know each other’s workflows.

The event will take place in Leuven, but if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link.

Practical details

• When: Thursday 6 November, from 14:00 to 16:30
• Where: coffee in main entrance hall and session in Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven) with online option: if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link
• Price: free
• Registration: no registration required

UPDATE (8 September 2025) Unfortunately, due to illness in the lab, we need to postpone today’s ETCL Nuts & Bolts talk to later in September. We are coordinating with our […]

The Flanders Training Network for Methodology and Statistics (FLAMES) is an inter-university training network comprised of Ghent University, Hasselt University, University of Antwerp, KU Leuven, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. This network is organizing a number of statistics and methodology courses this fall.

Some courses that may be of interest to our researchers include:

03/10/2025: Photovoice – the use of participatory photography in qualitative research – ON CAMPUS
27/10/2025: Critical Discourse Analysis – ON CAMPUS
05/11/2025: Strategies in qualitative data-analysis from a Grounded Theory perspective – ON CAMPUS
07/11/2025: Introduction to Interpretability & explanability in AI with Python – ONLINE
17/11/2025: Ethnographic research and observational methods – ONLINE
24/11/2025: Using NVivo for Qualitative Data Analysis – ON CAMPUS

The above is just a selection of the courses that are on the program for this fall. To see the full list of training opportunities and to register for any of the courses, visit the FLAMES website.

American Religious Ecologies seeks to understand how congregations from different religious traditions related to one another by creating new datasets, maps, and visualizations for the history of American religion. After years of photographing, editing, cataloging, and uploading schedules to the American Religious Ecologies website, we are excited to announce that we have uploaded the last […]

This past summer I had the opportunity to work on RRCHNM’s sustainability team. Our work focused on flattening websites built with content management systems (CMS), such as Drupal, Omeka, and WordPress. Flattening refers to the process of simplifying dynamic, database-backed websites to static versions built with only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This minimizes server space […]

Have you been meaning to set up an appointment to ask about research data management for your project, an aspect of your research workflow, or a specific DH tool or method? Visit one of our drop-in sessions and we will help you on the spot! No need to make an appointment!

The sessions are designed to support researchers, students, and staff members in all areas of digital scholarship. The initiative is a collaboration between Artes Research, DH-support staff and researchers at the Faculty of Arts, and ICTS at the Faculty of Arts.

Don’t have a question about any of the above but want to learn more about DH? No problem! Come and use our space for co-working! It’s a great moment to develop digital skills by starting a Programming Historian tutorial, for instance!

Everyone is welcome to attend, you do not need to register!

Stop by on one of the following dates and we will be glad to help you:

25/09/2025: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis

28/10/2025: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis

20/11/2025: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis

11/12/2025: 14:00h -16:00h, Het Salon LETT 00.24, Erasmushuis