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.
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.
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.
The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (aaDH) presents Digital Humanities on the Edge. To kickstart 2026, we bring together four speakers to examine topics core to the future directions of DH: Infrastructure, Surveillance, Platforms, and Artificial Intelligence. The panel will consider how these four domains are reshaping not only DH tools, but also the ethical and political conditions under which DH work now takes place. At a moment of considerable disciplinary inflection, aaDH invites you to a discussion on the edge – of methods, histories, theories, and time.
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 series, the core organizers are Leah Budke (KU Leuven), 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 spring 2026 edition proudly marks our twelfth term.
Our first two sessions this spring 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 special in person session during which members of our community can give an elevator pitch of their DH Benelux contribution.
The spring 2026 schedule will be updated as details about upcoming talks are confirmed. Please check back here or on the website (linked above) for full details. Information about each session will also be circulated via the mailing list.
Session 1 Date: Monday 30 March, 15h-16h30 CEST via Teams Speaker(s): Julie Van Ongeval, VUB Title: The Fall of Antwerp (1585) as a linguistic turning point? Language change from macro- and micro-perspectives. Abstract: The Spanish recapture of Antwerp (1585) during the Eighty Years’ War, known as the Fall of Antwerp, marks a crucial turning point, not only from a historical but also from a linguistic perspective. Historically, the Fall triggered profound social, economic, and demographic transformations. Prior to 1585, Antwerp had flourished as one of Europe’s largest and most prosperous cities, characterized by substantial immigration. In the aftermath of the Fall, however, the city experienced severe socio-economic decline and large-scale emigration, causing its population to decrease by more than half (from 100,000 inhabitants in 1580 to 42,000 in 1589) (De Meester 2011, Lesger 2007). From a linguistic standpoint, the Fall has traditionally been associated with what De Vooys (1970) termed “the decline of the Southern Netherlands”. The event is believed to have shifted the linguistic center of gravity to the Northern Netherlands, slowing down or even halting the ongoing processes of language standardization in the Southern Netherlands and, by extension, in Early Modern Antwerp (Van der Sijs 2020). Yet, these linguistic claims have primarily been based on printed, literary, or explicitly normative texts. Considerably less is known about language use in more informal and everyday contexts (Elspaß 2020).
This study addresses that gap by analyzing informal, handwritten letters preserved in the newly developed Early Modern Antwerp Corpus (1564-1653). Drawing on Dixon’s punctuated equilibrium model (1997), which proposes that significant historical events can accelerate linguistic change, we test an alternative hypothesis: rather than causing stagnation, the Fall of Antwerp may have triggered intensified linguistic variation and change. To assess this hypothesis, we examine six linguistic features that were undergoing change and were relevant to the process of Dutch standardization (clause negation, verbal cluster order variation, schwa apocope, the prefix ge- in past participles, word-final /k/, spelling of /ɣ/ in onset). First, we analyze developments at the community level to identify broader patterns of change. We then adopt a more microscopic perspective, investigating how individual writers respond to the shifting sociohistorical context. This includes both inter-individual variation (e.g. social categories and networks) and intra-individual change across the lifespan. By investigating the linguistic consequences of the Fall of Antwerp from both macro- and micro-level perspectives, this study aims to bridge the three waves of sociolinguistic research, integrating community-level patterns with individual-level variation and change.
Session 2 Date: Monday 20 April, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams Speaker(s): Léa Hermenault, UA Title: The Belgian Historical Gazetteer: (historical) toponyms in a digital era Abstract:My presentation will introduce the Belgian Historical Gazetteer, a project founded by CLARIAH-VL+ and hosted at the University of Antwerp. This project aims to set up a historical gazetteer of toponyms for the whole present-day territory of Belgium, in order to provide researchers with a collection of data that does not stop at Belgian provincial borders and which goes beyond the level of municipalities.
First, I will explain how the gazetteer is constructed using both automatic extraction of text from old maps and manual corrections/additions. Then, I will show how this gazetteer will help researchers deal with place names that appear in their sources. Finally, I will demonstrate the potential of digitized lists of historical place names for both toponymic and landscape studies which make digital gazetteers, aside from their classic function, innovative exploring tools.
Session 3– Special In-Person DH Benelux Session Date: Monday 18 May, 13h30-16h CEST, Location: room 1.01 Gogotte, Hoek 38, Leuvenseweg 38, Brussels (location is within walking distance from the central station) Speaker(s): various members of our community Format: elevator pitches of DH Benelux contributions
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!
These events are only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff
To support researchers in their use of relational data, CLARIAH-VL+ & Artes Research (partners in DH@rts) are hosting 2 Nodegoat workshops.
Nodegoat is a web-based research environment designed for the Humanities. The platform enables researchers to manage and visualize complex historical data, including vague dates and historical regions, as well as to generate diachronic geographical and social network visualizations.
During the workshop, participants will learn how to use this flexible digital environment for their own projects.
Program
The workshops will be given by Geert Kessels & Pim van Bree (the developers of LAB1100).
The morning session (09:30-12:30) will cover a general introduction to Nodegoat
During the afternoon session (14:00-17:00) the developers will present more advanced Nodegoat features.
You may sign up for just the morning session, just the afternoon session, or both workshops. Just make sure to register for each session individually.
Practicalities
When: April 24, 2026 from 09:30 to 12:30 and from 14:00-17:00
Where: Colloquium (05.28) in the University Library. These are in-person workshops and will not be recorded.
For who: This event is open to KU Leuven researchers working in the Humanities. No prior experience is required. Participants are encouraged to bring their own research questions or datasets to explore within Nodegoat
Price and registration: Free but mandatory. You can register here. You may sign up for just the morning session, just the afternoon session, or both workshops. Just make sure to register for each session individually. Registration deadline is 10 April 2026.
Every academic year, the HDYDI (How Do You Do (It)?) event on research data workflows signals the start of the Digital Scholarship Module. Through a series of sessions and (mini-)workshops, Artes Research aims to guide students through the complexities of scholarship in the digital age, from Open Science to Research Data Management and beyond.
At the HDYDI kick-off event, we invite three researchers from the Faculty of Arts to open the black box of their research workflows. By sharing the practical tools, decisions, and challenges that shape their day‑to‑day work, they aim to offer the first-year PhD researchers a realistic insight into what digital scholarship can look like across disciplines. We hope these behind‑the‑scenes glimpses help you discover approaches that can inform your own research journey!
Tim Debroyer: From Paper to Digital Source
The first speaker, Tim Debroyer, is a third-year PhD candidate at the Cultural History since 1750 research group. Under the supervision of Joris Vandendriessche and Kaat Wils, Tim is studying the evolution of 20th-century Belgian patient organisations as an overlooked link in the development of the modern welfare state. This involves examining their oral history as well as archival and published sources.
The focus of Tim’s talk is on the latter – periodicals specifically form one of the most important sources of information for his project. Faced with thousands of pages early on in his research project, he had to make strategic decisions: what to photograph, how to photograph it, and which digital methods were worth the investment.
Taking BVS Nieuws, the periodical of a diabetes association founded in the 1940s, as an example, Tim explains that he ended up manually photographing the entire series of journals so as to allow for a more thorough discourse analysis. This experience taught him some “tricks” which might be useful to others looking to photograph large amounts of text. Firstly, he used a classic camera in order to avoid the post-processing which smartphones tend to apply, and which can harm OCR quality. Secondly, he made sure to always photograph beyond the edges of the page to make it easier for the OCR software to recognize the boundaries. Thirdly, since taking pictures in the library was quite hectic, Tim always made notes of what he was doing: for instance, what stood out in the issues and what was missing – this made it much easier to return to the sources later on in his trajectory.
Once he properly organized the resulting pictures in folders per issue or volume with short, meaningful names, Tim set to extract the text using OCR (Optical Text Recognition) tools in order to enable keyword searches and quantitative analysis. (This is a labor-intensive step, he cautions, so make sure that it makes sense for your methodology before adopting it yourself.) Numerous scanning apps and online tools exist – Tesseract, Google Cloud Vision and Transkribus (for handwritten text) are great options for the more technically minded – but Tim made use of ABBYY FineReader, a commonly used OCR tool that is very performant and user-friendly. It is a commercial tool, but computers with ABBYY licenses are available at the Maurits Sabbe Library and Agora, so researchers looking to digitize a limited number of sources are free to go there without having to purchase their own license. ABBYY FineReader allows for image pre-processing (e.g. fixing lighting, straightening and cropping pictures), supports various languages, recognizes images in sources as well, and offers various formats for exporting (including .txt files). Tim was quite satisfied with the quality of the OCR’d texts: take good pictures, he says, and ABBYY will deliver good results!
To conclude, Tim shows how he processed the resulting text files in AntConc, a free concordance tool that’s often used for text mining. It allows for large-scale word searching and analysis, can provide keyword frequencies and information about relations to other words, and can easily compare different corpora. (Tim provides a small tip for those looking to explore AntConc: keep a stopword list of high-frequency words with little thematic content that the tool can filter out of its analysis.)
Of course, every researcher has to figure out what workflow suits them, but Tim importantly highlights that you should think about what you want to achieve before investing in digital methods. Consider the nature of your research project, the characteristics of your source corpus, the methodologies you use (discourse analysis, quantitative analysis, network & visual analysis) and let these things decide how you will process and study your sources. At the same time, don’t be afraid to try out new tools that might work well for you!
Of course, the quality of ABBYY FineReader’s OCR results depends on the quality of the input images.
Lauren Ottaviani: Mapping and Analyzing Women’s Magazine Archives
Our second speaker is Lauren Ottaviani, fourth-year PhD candidate in English Literature. Lauren’s project, supervised by Elke D’hoker, focuses on the representation of the women’s suffrage movement in two conservative, middlebrow periodicals dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries: The Woman at Home and Lady of the House. In doing so, the research seeks to consider the interaction between suffrage and domestic ideals at the turn of the twentieth century.
Similarly to Tim, then, Lauren also works with a large corpus of periodicals; and just as we saw with Tim, many of the magazines’ issues – which tend to be quite lengthy – remained as yet undigitized. The complexity of her materials meant that Lauren had to decide early on how to approach data management efficiently. In the end, a combination of three tools informed her research workflow.
Firstly, early on, she shifted from using Word for note-taking to using the free open-source tool Obsidian instead. As Lauren says, Obsidian (which was covered in last year’s HDYDI session as well) has the same ease of use that a program like Word offers, but you’ll actually be able to find your note again! With its added functionality, Obsidian allowed her to create a relational database of notes categorized by date, theme, or type, so as to keep track of any stories worth revisiting. Through tags and linked notes, Lauren could keep track of authorship, include direct links to the digitized magazine pages, and even uncover recurring anonymous authors. It’s also just a great tool for conference notes and miscellaneous admin.
Secondly, Lauren made use of the storage that’s provided by KU Leuven on OneDrive for Business. Currently, OneDrive is no longer recommended as a primary storage solution for research data at the university,1 but it does have some useful features – and it proved particularly handy for Lauren’s use case. Using the OneDrive smartphone app, she took pictures of interesting articles in the periodicals she was studying and placed those in her pre-organized folder structure. In contrast to Tim, Lauren did not think full OCR of her corpus was worth the time investment or really relevant to her research questions, but this smaller-scale scanning process (which resulted in perfectly legible captures) worked great for her methodology.
Thirdly and finally, Lauren also adopted Nodegoat as part of her workflow, mainly for its “mapping” potential. That is, Nodegoat is a database tool, but it also offers built-in network visualization capabilities, which Lauren used to map out different entries – i.e. letters from the magazines’ correspondence columns – tagged with geolocations. The resulting visualization allowed her to track where readers lived, what the magazines’ geographical reach was, and how their readership expanded over time – elements that were central to her analysis of the periodicals’ circulation.
Using a combination of these three tools, Lauren was able to create a structured, well-organized database out of a vast, undigitized corpus; and even though her approach differed quite substantially from that of Tim, both illustrate how the right tools, used well, help make large-scale periodical research manageable.
Using Nodegoat, Lauren was able to map out the readership of the periodicals she’s studying.
Sinem Bilican: Managing Multimodal Data in Healthcare Research
Sinem Bilican is the last speaker: as a PhD candidate at the Research Unit Translation & Interpreting Studies, she is part of the interdisciplinary research project Managing Language Barriers in Unplanned Care (MaLBUC). With the help of her supervisor Heidi Salaets, Sinem studies linguistic diversity and multilingual communication in healthcare practices with the goal of laying bare overlooked communication barriers. As such, her project involves collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine, and we can reasonably expect very different data types from what we saw in Tim’s and Lauren’s presentations.
Indeed, the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the research project – which encompasses ethnographic observations as well as a large-scale survey and interviews – necessitates the implementation of clear research data management practices. Sinem works with extensive field notes, images, video and audio recordings, questionnaires, and other survey data: a lot of materials to manage, to be sure!
Sinem begins by outlining the tools involved in her daily research workflow. Zotero is a usual suspect here, and one which we see in many researchers’ workflows as a handy reference manager as well as a note-taking and annotation tool. OneDrive, meanwhile, enables Sinem to exchange data, drafts and other documents transparently between team members; whereas for a related larger-scale project, the team opted for the ease of use of Teams and SharePoint (which is a recommended storage solution at the Faculty of Arts). Finally, Obsidian is mentioned again, and Sinem stresses its convenience for taking both academic and miscellaneous notes.
Next, Sinem presents some of the tools she used during the data collection phase of her research project. Interestingly, the first tool she talks about is an actual physical tool: a Livescribe pen. This smart pen with a built-in recorder synchronizes handwritten notes with audio, allowing Sinem to easily reconstruct interviews and medical consultations she attended2 – after a day of fieldwork, you can just plug it into your laptop and have everything appear in the Livescribe app. For the surveys, Sinem uses REDCap, which is commonly used in the Biomedical Sciences: it is a highly secure, KU Leuven-authenticated tool that can automatically generate full survey reports. It is, as Sinem points out, also quite a technical tool, but the university provides comprehensive support for users.
The last tool Sinem considers takes us from data collection to research dissemination – namely, Canva. Canva is a user-friendly, web-based design platform that’s great for making posters, visuals, and any other materials you might need to present your research. It allows for image upscaling, QR-code generation, and even themed PowerPoint slide decks. Sinem’s enthusiasm for Canva is infectious – and fittingly, she used it to create her HDYDI presentation as well!
By combining these tools, Sinem is able to navigate a complex, interdisciplinary project that involves varied datasets with clarity and structure; and while her workflow differs markedly from those of Tim and Lauren, it likewise shows how thoughtful tool choices can make even the most challenging research environments manageable.
REDCap proved a useful tool for Sinem’s research data workflow.
Across all three presentations, the workflows we saw revealed both overlaps and differences, but the shared message was clear: the best workflow is the one that genuinely works for your project. Let these examples inspire you, try out the tools that seem useful, and keep what supports your work. With a bit of exploration, you may find a data workflow that not only suits your project, but strengthens it!
As explained in the university’s storage solution FAQ, there are a number of reasons why OneDrive is no longer recommended as a primary solution for long-term research data storage; most significantly the fact that data stored on OneDrive servers is inaccessible to KU Leuven, which goes against RDM policy (principle II). This means that any data that you’ve kept on OneDrive is erased as soon as you leave the university for any reason, and recovering files is a difficult and costly procedure. ︎
Of course, these recordings were made with informed consent of all involved. ︎
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
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.
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:
image credit: Eivind Senneset, UiB
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)
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Some areas we can help you with:
Providing resources for various DH and RDM tools
Advice on DMPs and Research Data Management in general
Suggesting DH tools or methods for your specific research questions
Relational databases in FileMaker
Social Network Analysis and network visualizations
Computational tools for working with texts
…
Getting started with Zotero or optimizing Zotero use with an existing Zotero library
Advice on scholarly communication
Advice on Lirias
… and much more!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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, 2025January 8, 2026 Registration opens: February 15, 2026 Notification of acceptance: Late February, 2026
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!
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
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)
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.
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 atKasteelpark 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. Clickhere to register. Certificate of participation included.
A day of talks and discussion to explore the future of digital research infrastructure for the arts and humanities.
Date and time
Friday, November 7 · 9am – 5pm GMT
Location
Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh
Room 2.55 1 Lauriston Place Edinburgh EH3 9EF United Kingdom
About this event
On 7 November 2025, UK DARIAH Day 2025 will gather researchers and practitioners in the Digital Humanities to explore experiences, insights, and challenges related to working with the UK’s digital research infrastructure (DRI). We will consider how closer alignment with the European Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) can strengthen these initiatives in the UK, and explore what a future UK DRI might look like.
Throughout the day, posters, panels and presentations will showcase projects and other practical engagements with UK DRI.
We invite contributions to our our Lunchtime Showcase from projects,networks and infrastructures in Digital Humanities. Please indicate whether you are interested in contributing when you register.
The event will conclude with a networking reception open to all attendees.
The event is organised by the UK cooperating partners of DARIAH: the Universities of Brighton, Edinburgh, Exeter and Leeds; Kings College London; and the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
9.45 – 10.45: Infrastructure as Service or asMeitheal? Observations on a Decade (or Two) of DARIAH-IE.Prof Jennifer Edmond (Trinity College Dublin)
10.45 – 11.15: Coffee
11.15 – 12.00: Panel 1
Imagining DARIAH-UK: an exploration of potential infrastructural models. Sally Chambers (British Library / DARIAH)
CCP-AHC: A collaborative vision for access to large-scale compute for arts, humanities, and culture research in the UK. Eamonn Bell (University of Durham)
Towards a National Research Software Engineering Capability in Arts and Humanities Research. Andre Piza (The Alan Turing Institute)
12:15 – 13.00: Panel 2
DISKAH: Building skills for DRI-driven approaches to arts and humanities research. Karina Rodriguez Echavarria (University of Brighton)
Embedding arts and humanities research on responsible AI within industry and policy settings: lessons from the Bridging Responsible AI Divides programme. Gavin Leuzzi (Fellowships Lead, BRAID)
Title TBC, William Nixon (RLUK)
13:00 – 14:00: Lunch and Showcase
14:00 – 14:30: DRI operating models and opportunities: an AHRC perspective
14:30 – 17:00:Imagining Digital Infrastructure Futures Workshop. Jen Ross & Melissa Terras (University of Edinburgh)
How can we get a better understanding of current priorities, concerns and hopes about infrastructure, by imagining and collectively scrutinising possibilities? The workshop hosts from the University of Edinburgh have developed a set of research-informed, speculative scenarios to explore imagined futures for digital cultural heritage. This workshop will build on insights from responses to the scenarios to date, engage imaginatively with them, and facilitate strategic discussions about digital infrastructure futures.
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.
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 CETvia 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.
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!
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