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 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.

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!

—- Due to low registration numbers, this event has been cancelled —-

Yes, you read it correctly; we are having another in-person meeting! As the name suggests, the DH Virtual Discussion Group for ECRs in Belgium is usually a virtual event. We meet on a monthly basis during the academic year to keep up-to-date on all that is happening in our Belgian DH community and beyond and to hear about our members’ DH projects. The virtual format was a necessity when the group formed at the start of the pandemic, and it has worked well to fulfill the objective of bringing together people who are interested in DH from institutions all over Belgium. While we certainly intend to continue the virtual format, we are excited to organize our third annual in-person event this May (Monday 26/5, 14h00-16h00, Hoek 38, Brussels)!

This meeting of the Discussion Group will also be our special DH Benelux session. Each year we organize a special session a week or two before the annual DH Benelux conference (hosted this year in Amsterdam). During this session, members of our community who will be contributing to DH Benelux (in the form of a paper, poster, or demo) are invited to give an elevator pitch of their contribution. The format of this session holds many benefits for all who present and who attend:

1. It gives first-time presenters the opportunity to pitch their conference contribution in an informal setting and to work out some of the pre-conference nerves. Similarly, it provides all of our community members the opportunity to support our early career researchers and to encourage them as they pass this first milestone.
2. It allows our members to learn about what kind of DH work is happening in our community. We typically hear from one member of our community during each monthly session, but there is not enough time and space to hear from all our members in a more detailed presentation. The elevator pitch format is perfect for this because we can hear from many people in a short amount of time!
3. It gives insight into what to expect at a DH conference, and more specifically, what to expect at DH Benelux.
4. It promotes and supports the broader DH Benelux community, which is a tight-knit group of encouraging and inspiring people.
5. It provides inspiration and promotes further engagement within our community. With a large number of elevator pitches, the chance is greater that mutual research interests will become apparent.

We welcome attendance from anyone based at a Belgian institution (including Universities, Hogeschools, and GLAM institutions) with an interest in Digital Humanities! If this session sounds like something you would like to attend, please see below for the practical details and the link to register:

What: Special DH Benelux Session of the DH VDG
Where: Room 1.10 Malachiet, Hoek 38, Leuvenseweg 38, Brussels (location is within walking distance from the central station)
When: 14h00-16h00
Registration: open until 21/5 via OneButton

There will be cookies, coffee, tea, and water available during the session. Anyone who would like is welcome to go for a social drink at a nearby cafe together after the session. The session is free to attend, but registration is required. Registration will close on 21 May, so make sure to let us know soon if you will be joining us!

Have you been accepted to present a poster, paper, or demo at DH Benelux this year? Congratulations! We would love to have you do an elevator pitch during our meeting (timing will depend on how many people will present, but you can expect to have 3-4 minutes and a maximum of one PPT slide if desired). Please get in touch ASAP so we can get you on the schedule! You can email leah.budke@kuleuven.be to be added to the program.

While we really hope this event will have a large in-person attendance, we also realize that scheduling conflicts might prevent some of our members from being able to travel to Brussels for this event. If you would like to listen to the presentations or present your DH Benelux contribution virtually, that option is also possible. The MS Teams link for virtual access will be circulated to the mailing list the morning of the event. If you would like to present virtually, please let us know this when you contact us to be added to the program.

We hope to see you in Brussels on 26 May!

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 three different Belgian institutions. We strive to involve speakers from various 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+), Sven Lieber (KBR), 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 2025 edition proudly marks our tenth 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 our special DH Benelux session during which members of our community pitch their DH Benelux contribution in the form of an elevator pitch. This special session takes place in person (with option to join online), which is a fun way to bring the community together while also allowing us to learn about the diverse projects being done in the Benelux region!

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

Session 1
Monday 17 March, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Please note: a last-minute change of schedule has been made. Unfortunately, Tess Dejaeghere is unable to present for us during this session. Tom Gheldof will present about the CLARIAH-VL+ project.
Speaker(s): Tom Gheldof, KU Leuven (coordinator CLARIAH-VL+)
Title: Building a DH Service Infrastructure: CLARIAH-VL(+) and Open Science in action!
Abstract: This presentation introduces CLARIAH-VL, a project that aims to advance Digital Humanities research by establishing a robust DH infrastructure in Flanders (with partners UGent, UAntwerpen, KU Leuven, VUB and the Dutch Language Institute). During the period 2021-2024, CLARIAH-VL developed several high-quality and user-friendly DH tools or tool suites, the so-called Service Infrastructure Components (SICs). In this presentation, an overview of these SICs will be provided, spanning disciplines and DH methods such as Named Entity Linking, semantic annotation, TEI XML editing, topic detection and much more. Finally, this presentation will also highlight how the new project phase (under the acronym CLARIAH-VL+) will further develop its DH infrastructure and stays committed to Open Science and public engagement, not only by ensuring accessibility and alignment with European research infrastructures like CLARIN-ERIC and DARIAH-EU, but also by reaching out to other partners for Digital Humanities research in Flanders and beyond.

Session 2
Monday 28 April, 15h-16h30 CEST via Teams
Speaker(s): Roberta Pireddu, KU Leuven
Title: Enriching Cultural Heritage with AI: The AI4Culture Hackathon Journey (& A Glimpse into CrowdHeritage)
Abstract: In this presentation, I will share insights into the AI4Culture project, with a particular focus on the planning and execution of the AI4Cultural Hackathon—a one-week event held at KU Leuven in February 2025. I will discuss how the event was developed within the framework of the project, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations, challenges faced, and lessons learned. Additionally, I will highlight the CrowdHeritage platform, showcasing its successful implementation in various events organized as part of other projects and participatory activities.

Session 3 – Special In-Person DH Benelux Session
Monday 26 May, 13h30-16h CEST
Location: room 1.10 Malachiet, 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!

We look forward to seeing you this spring!

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 three different Belgian institutions. We strive to involve speakers from various 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), Sven Lieber (KBR), 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 2024 edition proudly marks our ninth term.

Our 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. It also allows us to learn about the diverse projects being done in the Benelux region related to digital humanities (an added bonus!).   

The following sessions are on the schedule for the fall 2024 semester (details will be updated as confirmed):

Session 1
Monday 21 October, 15h-16h30 CEST via Teams
Speaker(s): Leonardo Grotti, University of Antwerp
Title: Methodological Challenges and Innovations in Hearing Therapy Research: The MuLiSSA
Abstract: Disabling hearing loss (DHL) is a global concern, impacting millions and necessitating innovative solutions. In the pursuit of these solutions, hearing therapy research encounters methodological complexities that require careful consideration. This paper introduces the MuLiSSA project, which aims to address these challenges and advance hearing assessment and rehabilitation.

Our research targets the shift from traditional in-booth speech audiometry to self-administered assessments via wireless audio streaming, increasing accessibility across settings. We validate the feasibility of boothless self-testing, accounting for technical and environmental constraints.

To improve precision in speech audiometry, we explore techniques for identifying phoneme errors in patients, aiming to enhance personalized hearing device settings and rehabilitation outcomes. Additionally, we address multilingual speech testing to enable comparable scores across languages, breaking language barriers in hearing healthcare. We also discuss strategies for integrating diverse research methodologies, addressing interdisciplinary challenges, and managing funding complexities in methodologically diverse projects.

Session 2
Monday 25 November, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): Anthe Sevenants, KU Leuven
Title: The Sims for Research: The Merit of Using Computer Simulations
Abstract: As researchers, we sometimes have questions that are rather difficult to test empirically. Often, these are bold, far-reaching questions which, while ambitious, are simply impossible to operationalise. Usually, these restraints are of practical, financial or some other concern. In my talk, I propose a methodology which sidesteps these issues: computer simulations. With computer simulations, you can build your own virtual societies which you can establish in any way you like, a practice conceptually analogous to “The Sims” games. The idea is that in these simulations, you can distill social relations between people to just the mechanisms you are interested in as a researcher. In this virtual world free of noise, budget contraints or ethical commissions, you are free to change the rules according to which agents, virtual inhabitants, behave. In this way, you are able to test what the theoretical limits are to the specific behaviour or theories you are interested in.

While it is clear that computer simulations could be used for a plethora of different research questions within the humanities (i.e. history, archaeology), I will present how simulations can be used for the study of language change. To this end, I will explain the plans for a case study from my FWO project, which is centred around how computer simulations can help us understand how frequency of use shapes language change. I will give concrete examples of the types of questions I would like to answer with the computer simulations, which will give a better idea of the genre of questions this methodology is able to answer in the first place. At the same time, I will emphasise the shortcomings and pitfalls of computer simulations as a research tool, because unfortunately, unlike “The Sims”, good research has no cheat codes.

View Anthe’s presentation in our Zenodo community

Session 3
Monday 16 December, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): Fien Messens, Ghent University
Title: Raw to Refined: The Case of the Navez Project
Abstract: (Art) historical data can be tricky—often fragmented, incomplete, and curated—making it challenging to study the impact of key figures. However, the remaining data in 2024 offers valuable insights into earlier societies. In this presentation, I will address the challenges of identifying historical figures, such as artists, whose identities are often obscured by incomplete records or inconsistent name spellings. Together, we will explore how Digital Humanities methods, including Linked Open Data (LOD), can assist in contextualizing these individuals (and how not).

We’ll step back into the 19th century to examine the surviving data on Belgium’s most important neoclassical painter, François-Joseph Navez (1787-1869). This research is part of the FWO-funded Navez Project, a collaboration between Ghent University and KBR.

The slides from Fien’s presentation will be made available here after the meeting

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!

Yes, you read it correctly; we are having another in-person meeting! As the name suggests, the DH Virtual Discussion Group for ECRs in Belgium is usually a virtual event. We meet on a monthly basis during the academic year to keep up-to-date on all that is happening in our Belgian DH community and beyond and to hear about our members’ DH projects. The virtual format was a necessity when the group formed at the start of the pandemic, and it has worked well to fulfill the objective of bringing together people who are interested in DH from institutions all over Belgium. While we certainly intend to continue the virtual format, we are excited to organize our second annual in-person event this May (Monday 27/5, 13h30-16h00, Hoek 38, Brussels)!

This meeting of the Discussion Group will also be our special DH Benelux session. Each year we organize a special session a week or two before the annual DH Benelux conference (hosted this year in Leuven, BE!). During this session, members of our community who will be contributing to DH Benelux (in the form of a paper, poster, or demo) are invited to give an elevator pitch of their contribution. The format of this session holds many benefits for all who present and who attend:

1. It gives first-time presenters the opportunity to pitch their conference contribution in an informal setting and to work out some of the pre-conference nerves. Similarly, it provides all of our community members the opportunity to support our early career researchers and to encourage them as they pass this first milestone.
2. It allows our members to learn about what kind of DH work is happening in our community. We typically hear from one member of our community during each monthly session, but there is not enough time and space to hear from all our members in a more detailed presentation. The elevator pitch format is perfect for this because we can hear from many people in a short amount of time!
3. It gives insight into what to expect at a DH conference, and more specifically, what to expect at DH Benelux.
4. It promotes and supports the broader DH Benelux community, which is a tight-knit group of encouraging and inspiring people.
5. It provides inspiration and promotes further engagement within our community. With a large number of elevator pitches, the chance is greater that mutual research interests will become apparent.

We welcome attendance from anyone based at a Belgian institution (including Universities, Hogeschools, and GLAM institutions) with an interest in Digital Humanities! If this session sounds like something you would like to attend, please see below for the practical details and the link to register:

What: Special DH Benelux Session of the DH VDG
Where: Room 1.01 Gogotte, Hoek 38, Leuvenseweg 38, Brussels (location is within walking distance from the central station)
When: 13h30-16h00
Registration: open until 20/5 via OneButton

There will be cookies, coffee, tea, and water available during the session. Anyone who would like is welcome to go for a social drink at a nearby cafe together after the session. The session is free to attend, but registration is required. Registration will close on 20 May, so make sure to let us know soon if you will be joining us!

Have you been accepted to present a poster, paper, or demo at DH Benelux this year? Congratulations! We would love to have you do an elevator pitch during our meeting (timing will depend on how many people will present, but you can expect to have 3-4 minutes and a maximum of one PPT slide if desired). Please get in touch ASAP so we can get you on the schedule! You can email artesresearch@kuleuven.be to be added to the program.

While we really hope this event will have a large in-person attendance, we also realize that scheduling conflicts might prevent some of our members from being able to travel to Brussels for this event. If you would like to listen to the presentations or present your DH Benelux contribution virtually, that option is also possible. The MS Teams link for virtual access will be circulated to the mailing list the morning of the event. If you would like to present virtually, please let us know this when you contact us to be added to the program.

We hope to see you in Brussels on 27 May!

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 three different Belgian institutions. We strive to involve speakers from various Belgian institutions and encourage participation from all those who are interested in DH and are located at any Belgian institution. This semester, the core organizers are Prof. Margherita Fantoli (KU Leuven Faculty of Arts), Dr. Leah Budke (KU Leuven Libraries Artes), and Paavo van der Eecken (University of Antwerp). Over the past years, the series has become a regular event. The spring 2024 edition proudly marks our eighth term.

Our regular 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. It also allows us to learn about the diverse projects being done in the Benelux region related to digital humanities (an added bonus!).

The following sessions are on the schedule for the spring 2024 semester (details will be updated as confirmed):

Session 1
Monday 25 March, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): Nooshin Shahidzadeh Asadi, University of Antwerp
Title: “Developing Interoperable Open-Source Tools in the Digital Humanities: Merits and Complexities”
Abstract: For this session, Nooshin Asadi (PhD student, the University of Antwerp) will discuss her pivot from software engineering to pursuing a PhD in digital humanities and the changes it has brought about in her professional and academic life. She will talk about her experience with the occasionally harsh but ultimately rewarding reality of producing prototypical, open-source software in the world of DH, while examining in detail the current project she is working on (Axolotl, a real-time collaborative XML editor) and the challenges and opportunities she has faced throughout its development.
 See Nooshin’s slides in our Zenodo community

Session 2
Monday 29 April, 15h-16h30 CEST via Teams
Speaker(s): Kushal Jayesh Tatariya, KU Leuven
Title: Sociolinguistically Informed Interpretability: A Case Study in Hinglish Emotion Classification
Abstract: In this presentation, I will talk about my project that approaches the interpretability of language models in Natural Language Processing (NLP) from a sociolinguistic perspective. We apply this perspective to the task of emotion classification for code-mixed data. Studies have shown that Hinglish speakers switch to Hindi when expressing negative emotions and to English when expressing positive emotions. To understand if language models can learn these associations, we study the effect of language on emotion prediction across 3 pre-trained language models (PLMs) on a Hinglish emotion classification dataset. I will go into the details of our process of annotating the dataset, the tools we used for our interpretability analysis, and the challenges of working with such subjective data in a setting that demands objectivity. Through this process, we are able to conclude that language models do learn associations between language choice and emotional expression, and this learning can have an impact on model prediction. In conclusion, through a discussion about the results of this project, I would like to explore the general implications of leveraging linguistic theories to understand language models in NLP.
 Kushal’s slides will be shared here after the session

Session 3 – Special DH Benelux Session!
—Read more details about this special session in this blogpost—
Monday 27 May, 13h30-16h00 CEST live in Brussels and online via MS Teams
Speaker(s): Various from our DH community
 The presentation will be linked here after the session

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 spring!

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 three different Belgian institutions. We strive to involve speakers from various 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 Prof. Margherita Fantoli (KU Leuven Faculty of Arts), Dr. Leah Budke (KU Leuven Libraries Artes), Dr. Sven Lieber (KBR), and Paavo van der Eecken (University of Antwerp). Over the past years, the series has become a regular event. The fall 2023 edition proudly marks our seventh term.

Our 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. It also allows us to learn about the diverse projects being done in the Benelux region related to digital humanities (an added bonus!).   

The following sessions are on the schedule for the fall 2023 semester (details will be updated as confirmed):

Session 1
Monday 23 October, 15h-16h30 CEST via Teams
Speaker(s): Sergio Alonso Mislata, Volunteer at KBR, CAMille Project
Title: CAMille at KBR: first steps of a project on Belgian journalists
Abstract: In this presentation, Sergio (MA in Information and Library Studies at Aberystwyth University) will summarise the main goals and processes established during his volunteering experience at KBR within the CAMille project. CAMille, founded in 2020 (ULB-KBR), is the (Belgian) Centre for Archives on the Media and Information. Two main research projects are currently carried out at CAMille: On the one hand, writing a history of Belgian journalism from the end of the 19th century to the present day, from a specific angle: the study of critical discourses. On the other hand, developing a database of Belgian journalists and media since 1830. This presentation will touch upon the latter.
 View Sergio’s presentation slides in the DH VDG Zenodo Community

Session 2
Monday 27 November, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): Prof. Hilde De Weerdt (KU Leuven), Dr. Sunkyu Lee (KU Leuven), Dr. Sander Molenaar (IISG), Dr. Taylor Zaneri (IISH), Ms. Wangzhi Xi (PhD student, KU Leuven)
Title: Analysing Regions through the Digital History of Infrastructures
Abstract: This talk will introduce two digital research projects–Regionalizing Infrastructures in Chinese History (Reginfra) and The Lives and Afterlives of Imperial Material Infrastructure in Southeastern China (InfraLives). Both projects investigate how large-scale infrastructures, such as city walls, bridges, and roads, affected regional (dis)integration in the Chinese and neighboring territories from roughly 1000 to 1900. One of the key objectives is to explore the spatial patterns of infrastructures, including their construction, maintenance, destruction, failure, uses, and cultural meanings across different regions. Based on empirical data derived from digitized texts, the projects aim to critically examine assumptions about the relation between infrastructures and regional integration and to develop dynamic models of regional histories. The presenters will discuss methods in corpus building and text and image annotation, and explain future plans for comparative spatial analysis and machine learning.
View the presentation slides in the DH VDG Zenodo Community

Session 3
Monday 18 December, 15h-16h30 CET via Teams
Speaker(s): Mona Allaert, University of Antwerp
Title: From Hieroglyphs to Hyperlinks: Introducing Digital Humanities to Bachelor Students
Abstract: For this session, Mona Allaert (teaching assistant at the University of Antwerp), will discuss the hurdles encountered when developing and teaching the module “Digital Literacy”, a new course followed by second-year bachelor students of Linguistics and Literature. She’ll delve into the unique challenges of instructing a technically focused subject to a largely non-technical audience. Additionally, she’ll shed light on the practical learning labs that complement theoretical lessons, designed to offer students an engaging introduction to hands-on digital humanities. As the course’s second edition is underway, the discussion will revolve around adjustments made based on valuable feedback received from the previous year’s students.
View Mona’s presentation slides in the DH VDG Zenodo Community

Yes, you read it correctly; we are having our first in-person meeting! As the name suggests, the DH Virtual Discussion Group for ECRs in Belgium is usually a virtual event. We meet on a monthly basis during the academic year to keep up-to-date on all that is happening in our Belgian DH community and beyond and to hear about our members’ DH projects. The virtual format was a necessity when the group formed at the start of the pandemic, and it has worked well to fulfill the objective of bringing together people who are interested in DH from institutions all over Belgium. While we certainly intend to continue the virtual format, we are excited to organize our first in-person event this May (Monday 22/5, 13h30-15h30, Hoek 38, Brussels)!

This meeting of the Discussion Group will also be our special DH Benelux session. Each year we organize a special session a week or two before the annual DH Benelux conference. During this session, members of our community who will be contributing to DH Benelux (in the form of a paper, poster, or demo) are invited to give an elevator pitch of their contribution. The format of this session holds many benefits for all who present and who attend:

1. 1. It gives first-time presenters the opportunity to pitch their conference contribution in an informal setting and to work out some of the pre-conference nerves. Similarly, it provides all of our community members the opportunity to support our early career researchers and to encourage them as they pass this first milestone.
   2. It allows our members to learn about what kind of DH work is happening in our community. We typically hear from one member of our community during each monthly session, but there is not enough time and space to hear from all our members in a more detailed presentation. The elevator pitch format is perfect for this because we can hear from many people in a short amount of time!
   3. It gives insight into what to expect at a DH conference, and more specifically, what to expect at DH Benelux.
   4. It promotes and supports the broader DH Benelux community, which is a tight-knit group of encouraging and inspiring people.
   5. It provides inspiration and promotes further engagement within our community. With a large number of elevator pitches, the chance is greater that mutual research interests will become apparent.

We welcome attendance from anyone based at a Belgian institution (including Universities, Hogeschools, and GLAM institutions) with an interest in Digital Humanities! If this session sounds like something you would like to attend, please see below for the practical details and the link to register:

What: Special DH Benelux Session of the DH VDG
Where: Room 1.01 Gogotte, Hoek 38, Leuvenseweg 38, Brussels (location is within walking distance from the central station)
When: 13h30-15h30
Registration: open until 11/5 via OneButton

There will be cookies, coffee, tea, and water available during the session. Anyone who would like is welcome to go for a social drink at a nearby cafe together after the session. The session is free to attend, but registration is required. Registration will close on 11 May, so make sure to let us know soon if you will be joining us!

Have you been accepted to present a poster, paper, or demo at DH Benelux this year? Congratulations! We would love to have you do an elevator pitch during our meeting (timing will depend on how many people will present, but you can expect to have 3-4 minutes and a maximum of one PPT slide if desired). Please get in touch ASAP so we can get you on the schedule! You can email leah.budke@kuleuven.be to be added to the program.

While we really hope this event will have a large in-person attendance, we also realize that scheduling conflicts might prevent some of our members from being able to travel to Brussels for this event. If you would like to listen to the presentations or present your DH Benelux contribution virtually, that option is also possible. The MS Teams link for virtual access will be circulated to the mailing list the morning of the event. If you would like to present virtually, please let us know this when you contact us to be added to the program.

We hope to see you in Brussels on 22 May!

In December we closed off our fifth edition of the DH Virtual Discussion Group, during which we heard from three different early career researchers in our community. The Discussion Group series was jointly organized this semester by Prof. Margherita Fantoli (KU Leuven Faculty of Arts), Dr. Sven Lieber (KBR), Prof. Julie M. Birkholz (KBR Digital Research Lab and Ghent CDH), and myself, Dr. Leah Budke (KU Leuven Libraries Artes). This semester’s edition was yet another engaging and inspiring series of talks and discussions centering on many different aspects of DH research.

In October, Paavo Van Der Eecken from the University of Antwerp introduced us to his PhD project and detailed the decisions that went into to developing the annotation methods for a large corpus of images from nineteenth century Children’s literature. For a recap of this session and to learn more about Paavo’s work, you can read the full recap blog post here.

November brought us an engaging presentation from Houda Lamqaddam on the concept of digital satellites. This was our largest group for the fall edition with an attendance of 27, which led to a dynamic Q&A moment at the end of the meeting. Houda’s presentation took us behind the scenes of her work on Project Cornelia. This project is a hybrid research engine which focuses on bridging art history and computer science. As such, it uses and develops datasets and develops data retrieval and visualization tools to use with seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry and paintings.

From this starting point, Houda’s presentation raised some important questions about the creation and long-term preservation of digital tools. As Houda explained, questions of maintenance and sustainability are at the heart of digital humanities research, especially when it comes to the development of new digital research tools.

To conceptualize the relationship between digital research tools and their role in specific research projects and beyond, Houda introduced the concept of “digital satellites” to us. There are three defining characteristics to this concept: digital satellites are (1) “built to support a specific goal including communication, exploration or analysis, (2) they are artificial in nature, i.e. they exist in highly non-digital spaces, and (3) they orbit around more grounded research material.”[1] Houda also emphasized the importance of the end of the satellite’s life, likening this phase to a type of “space debris.” This phase also deserves thought and preparation; according to Houda, we should be asking ourselves how digital research tools can be useful for us during this phase as well. Some of the steps that Houda defines to support long-term function of satellites include (1) archiving the design, (2) archiving process and requirements, (3) making code available in open access, and (4) considering removing tools that no longer function.[2]

Houda’s presentation sparked much thought and interesting discussion. While we often see how new tools are developed or how existing tools are integrated into various research projects during the DH Virtual Discussion Group presentations, Houda’s presentation encouraged us to think more critically about the long lifecycle of these tools. This is of particular importance when we think of digital scholarship as a concept that also encompasses research data management and scholarly publishing. Documentation and extensive archiving of research output, in this case in the form of digital research tools, is of key importance. Moreover, publishing code in open access has the benefit of not only allowing more access but also creating transparency and giving insight into the research process and development of specific tools.

During our final session in December, we heard from Laura Soffiantini about her research on the extraction of formulae from ancient Latin funerary inscriptions. As Laura explained during her presentation, the funerary inscriptions are typically written or carved into stone pottery or metal. This is a vast amount of material, but Laura’s corpus for this project was narrowed to texts written on tombstones. The pieces that Laura is particularly interested in in these texts—the formulae—are multi-word sentence(s) in semi-fixed or fully-fixed form(s) which are used as stock expressions. Links exist between these words and removing a word in the phrase cannot be done without altering the meaning of the phrase.

Laura was particularly interested in applying computational methods to this large corpus of textual data to test whether or not these methods hold any potential for the recognition and extraction of formulae. She relied on two approaches to test this: (1) a rule-based approach with a manually annotated dataset of funerary formulae and (2) a frequency-based analysis and extraction determined by word combinations.

Laura’s research gave us some insight into the application of different computational methods with a specific linguistic focus. The comparison showed that both methods hold potential for future application, but that neither was fail proof 100% of the time. As a result, Laura’s analysis is a great example of the importance of methods-based research. In addition to presenting us interesting research, it also helped our group to think about the digital methods we apply in humanities research and the way that we justify these decisions in our work.

On behalf of the organizers, I would like to thank all of our presenters from the fall 2022 edition as well as all of those who attended the sessions. We enjoyed learning more about these projects, catching up with and learning from others in our community, and welcoming new people into our DH circle! If you would like to join us for the spring 2023 edition of the Discussion Group, you can join our mailing list here. When we have the spring program finalized, we will also publish the details here on Scholarly Tales.

[1] Houda Lamqaddam, “In Search of Meaning: Thinking Information Visualization within Art History Research” (2022), 93.

[2] Lamqaddam, 98–99.

Are you an early career researcher in the field of Digital Humanities or a student interested in DH approaches 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! 

Our sessions this fall will continue the “under-the-hood” format. In these sessions, a volunteer from our community provides a thirty-minute overview of a digital project which implements a given tool, approach, or platform. This is not meant to be a 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 about other related ongoing projects that are implementing similar functionalities. This “under-the-hood” session format will allow 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. It also allows us to learn about the diverse projects in the Benelux region related to digital humanities! (An added bonus!)  

If you would like to join us for the fall edition, please mark your calendars for the following dates (check back for updated information concerning titles and abstracts):   

1 – Monday 24 October from 15h – 16h30 CEST via MS Teams

Speaker: Paavo Van der Eecken from the University of Antwerp
Title of Presentation: “Viewing Between the Lines: Annotating Sensitive Attributes in Illustrated Children’s Literature”
Abstract: In recent years, awareness has been growing about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Yet, when it comes to historical literature, the argument is often “that’s what the times were like”. The implicit assumption is that all children’s literature back then was similarly racist and/or sexist. Recent research, however, has revealed that the historical literary production for children was not as monolithic as that argument seems to suggest.

In the context of historical Dutch-language children’s literature, we still lack an overview of how representation plays out within the books, especially when it comes to the illustrations – a vital part of those stories. With this research project we aim to fill that gap, by analyzing patterns of representation along the lines of age, race, class, and gender. As a first step, we have annotated all human characters in the illustrations of one thousand children’s books published between 1800 and 1940 and assigned them attributes according to the four axes under study.

During the under-the-hood session we will discuss the decision-making processes underlying those annotations. We will pay particular attention to the data preprocessing, the tools that were selected, the use of external annotators and the specific categories and labels that were applied while annotating.

2 – Monday 14 November from 15h – 16h30 CET via MS Teams

Speaker: Houda Lamqaddam from the University of Liège and KU Leuven
Title of Presentation:  “Digital Satellites in Humanities Research”
Abstract: Though the argument for digital tools in humanistic research has been growing, they are often appreciated based on their validity in addressing specific research questions. In order to properly assess their effective value to the field, a more long-term assessment is needed. In this talk, I will present the concept of Digital Satellites in humanistic Research. Through the analogy with artificial satellites, I interrogate the short and long-term function of digital tools in DH by looking beyond their instrumental phase, into their lifecycle in its entirety. I will use concrete examples of the Cornelia digital art history project infrastructure to show how the proposed design principles can be applied.

3 – Monday 19 December from 15h – 16h30 CET  via MS Teams

Speaker: Laura Soffiantini from KU Leuven
Title of Presentation: “Yet there is pattern in’t!” Studying formulaic expressions in Latin funerary epigraphy.
Abstract: Romans inscribed hundreds of thousands of texts on stone. Laws, treaties, but also curses, and love poems were written on rigid supports and displayed to the public. But the kind of epigraphic texts that most copiously came down to us is private inscriptions commemorating the loss of a loved one. Generally reduced to a few lines, Latin tomb texts conveyed biographical information about the commemorated person in a highly standardized form.

The content of funerary inscriptions is largely formulaic. The same expressions and vocabulary are repeated in hundreds of texts to express feelings of attachment, love, or grief. Some of the Latin formulas became so popular over the centuries that are still in use nowadays. Despite the apparent uniformity of the texts, a closer look reveals significant variations in the use and combinations of formulas. With my talk, I aim to illustrate the potentialities offered by formulaic identification methods to investigate large corpora of formalized texts. I will demonstrate that the use of text analysis techniques will permit us to overcome the challenges posed by the redundant nature of epigraphic texts. Moreover, I will show to what extent the application of semantic network analysis provides a flexible approach to discovering communication patterns in Latin inscriptions. In conclusion, I will discuss the strategies to explore the dynamic relations between formulaic expressions in texts.

Some practical matters and registration:  

All of our sessions this fall will be held on MS Teams, and you will receive the link to the virtual meeting room on the day of the discussion.   

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; and we will include an extra box on the Padlet (a link to the Padlet will be communicated in the email before the session) where you can also post these.   

If you would like to register or invite other colleagues to join, please fill in the registration form for the mailing list here. Please note, if you have already received email correspondence about previous editions of our DH Virtual Discussion Group, 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 materials 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.  

The first meeting of the spring 2022 edition of the DH Virtual Discussion Group for ECRs in Belgium kicked off on Monday 21 March with a presentation from Gianluca Valenti (University of Liège). We had a total of twenty attendees—some new faces and some familiar ones—who all contributed to an engaging conversation about digital humanities. 

This session followed our standard format, which opens with a greeting from the organizers, Julie M. Birkholz (KBR and Ghent University), Margherita Fantoli (KU Leuven), and Leah Budke (KU Leuven). This is followed by our networking session where new and returning attendees can introduce themselves in a small group, tell about their interests and experiences in DH, and get to know others in the community. This networking moment also allows those of us who already know each other to catch up and enjoy a coffee or tea before the main presentation starts and to welcome new members into our community. After the networking moment, the group comes back together to share any upcoming DH events or opportunities. The main event follows, when a member of our community gives us a behind-the-scenes look at a digital project, workflow, or tool. 

Gianluca’s “under-the-hood” presentation was titled “Modern Letters and Text Analysis: The ‘EpistolarITA’ Project” and discussed the importance of epistolary texts in historical research. As Gianluca explained, today there is a wealth of correspondence available to researchers, but we are still lacking adequate tools to engage with these materials to the fullest extent. The EpistolarITA project aims to fill this gap and to contribute to scholarly efforts to exploit historical epistolary texts through the development of the EpistolarITA database. The database brings together fifteenth through seventeenth century Italian letters and allows users to perform statistical analysis on this corpus. As Gianluca explained in his presentation, the database allows readers to compare a target text to the texts in the corpus. The database then has the capability to return similar texts, ranking them in order of their similarity. In order to be able to accomplish this, the algorithm uses a number of different techniques including TF-IDF, Word2Vec, and Named-Entity-Recognition. The advantage of using the database, as Gianluca demonstrated, is that it allows users to draw connections or to see patterns that they might not otherwise see. While the full text of letters is not made available due to copyright restrictions, users are still able to perform text analysis on these materials and to return results that they would otherwise not be able to achieve without many visits to the archives and the additional work that goes into creating the infrastructure which allows this type of text analysis.  

The EpistolarITA database is still in the process of being populated, but the official publication is expected this spring. For now, the project site and database is entirely in Italian, but they hope to make an English translation available in the future. 

If a look behind the scenes of a digital project sounds interesting to you, we would be delighted to have you join us for our next DH Virtual Discussion Group meeting on Monday 25 April from 15h-16h30 CEST! In this session, Montaine Denys from the Flanders Heritage Libraries will take us behind the scenes of the Flanders Heritage Libraries’ digitization projects. Montaine’s talk, titled “Managing the Evaluation of OCR Quality in Flemish Newspaper Collections,” will include a discussion of the project workflow, the creation of a “ground truth” dataset, interpreting results, and the specific challenges they have faced and the lessons they have learned while undertaking this project.  

To join us for this session or any future sessions all you need to do is register for our mailing list. Once registered, you will receive all future emails, including the links to the Zoom meetings. These links are distributed via email the morning of the event. 

The DH Virtual Discussion Group is designed to be a low-threshold way for researchers, particularly early career researchers, to come together and learn about digital humanities. Everyone is welcome to attend and absolutely no DH expertise is required. To see a full overview of this spring’s sessions, click here. If there is a session that seems of interest to you, please do join us! 

Are you an early career researcher in the field of Digital Humanities or a student interested in DH approaches 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! This series is jointly organized by KU Leuven Libraries Artes Research and the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities.  

Our first two sessions this spring will continue the “under-the-hood” format. In these sessions, a volunteer from our community provides a thirty-minute overview of a digital project which implements a given tool, approach, or platform. This is not meant to be a 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 about other, related ongoing projects that are implementing similar functionalities. This “under-the-hood” session format will allow 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. It also allows us to learn about the diverse projects in the Benelux region related to digital humanities! (An added bonus!)  

Our final session of the spring edition will be a special DH Benelux session. This is our second year running this special session, where members of our community who will also be presenting in some form at the 2022 DH Benelux conference (conference paper, poster, workshop) are invited to give an elevator pitch of their DH Benelux contribution. These elevator pitches serve a dual purpose: they let the presenter practice presenting their material in advance of the conference, but they also let our DH community get a taste of what to expect at the DH Benelux conference.    

If you would like to join us for the spring edition, please mark your calendars for the following dates:   

1 – Monday 21 March from 15h – 16h30 CET  

Speaker: Gianluca Valenti from the University of Liège
Title of presentation: “Modern Letters and Text Analysis: The ‘EpistolarITA’ Project“
Abstract: The growth of interest in epistolary texts over the last few decades has led to a flourishing of international research projects devoted to cataloguing, editing, and studying modern letters, in a collective and coordinated effort to better understand these materials. In this context, at the University of Liège, a database has been launched, through which users are able to perform statistical analyses on a large epistolary corpus of letters. The algorithm uses techniques such as TF-IDF, Word2Vec, and Named-Entity Recognition to help users to discover new connections, explore new avenues of research, and find new interpretations in the network of the Republic of letters. 

2 – Monday 25 April from 15h – 16h30 CEST  

Speaker: Montaine Denys from the Flanders Heritage Libraries
Title: ”Managing the Evaluation of OCR Quality in Flemish Newspaper Collections”
Abstract: The OCR quality of digitised historical newspapers can greatly impact their findability and usability. Over the past year, the Flanders Heritage Libraries has worked together with meemoo, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and ten other partner organisations in order to evaluate the current OCR quality of Flemish digitised newspaper collections, as well as their potential for improvement. In this session Montaine Denys will delve into the coordination of this project. More concretely she will focus on the project workflow, the creation of a ground truth dataset, interpreting the results, the challenges faced and the lessons learned.

3 – Monday 23 May from 15h – 16h30 CEST  

Topic: Special DH Benelux Session
Format: Elevator pitches
Presenters: Volunteers from our DH community (tbc) 

Some practical matters and registration:  

All of our sessions will again be held on Zoom, and you will receive the link to the virtual meeting room on the day of the discussion.   

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; and we will include an extra box on the Padlet (a link to the Padlet will be communicated in the email before the session) where you can also post these.   

If you would like to register or invite other colleagues to join, please fill out the registration form for the mailing list here. Please note, if you have already received email correspondence about the Spring 2022 series, 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 Zoom link and any additional materials 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.  

How can I present my own work?  

For those of you who would like an opportunity to share your DH ideas and projects, we hope you will consider volunteering for a future DH Virtual Discussion Group meeting. You do not need to be an expert to present: you can be the PI, a researcher, a PhD candidate, or a master’s student. Please use this as an opportunity to present your work at any stage. ALL are welcome to share and receive feedback. We want to stress that projects presented in the context of the DH Virtual Discussion Group should be given and received in a welcoming environment where we do not judge each other harshly, but rather provide encouragement, advice, and on-topic questions. If you are planning to present at DH Benelux this year (1-3 June 2022) and would like to do an elevator pitch, we would love to hear from you. Moreover, if you would like to support our community by giving a presentation about a tool, project, or workflow that you have used or developed, please also get in touch (leah.budke@kuleuven.be, margherita.fantoli@kuleuven.be, or julie.birkholz@ugent.be) and let us know you are interested.  

On Monday 13 December the third session of the DH Virtual Discussion Group for Early Career Researchers in Belgium will take place (via Zoom at 15:00-16:30 CET).  

Next Monday’s speaker is Dr. Rudy Jos Beerens from KU Leuven, whose “Under-the-Hood” presentation is titled “From Archival Source to Structured Data: A Practical Introduction to Project Cornelia’s (Slow) Digital Art History.” The following abstract provides an overview of Jos’s research interests and his planned talk for our discussion group:  

In this session, Rudy Jos Beerens (KU Leuven) discloses how Project Cornelia – an ongoing digital art history project led by Koenraad Brosens (www.projectcornelia.be) – translates messy archival sources into structured data suitable for computational analysis. This will be done in three parts. In the first part, Jos will briefly present Project Cornelia’s mission to come to a more inclusive understanding of early modern Flemish “art worlds.” In the second part, he will discuss how the Cornelia relational database was developed to accomplish this mission and take a closer look at how this database translates written archival records into usable and structured data. Finally, in the third part, Jos will demonstrate how the collected data can then be analyzed using existing tools such as MySQL and Gephi and the custom-build tool NAHR. 

If you would like to register for this session, you can do so by joining our mailing list. If you have already registered for our mailing list, then there is no need to register again—you are already receiving all our updates and will receive the link to join the Zoom meeting on Monday 13 December.   

If you know any Belgian early career researchers who might be interested in attending our discussion group series, please direct them to our registration page. All are welcome to attend! We strive to maintain an informal atmosphere where even those with little to no DH expertise can feel comfortable learning and participating in the discussion. We welcome those with more developed expertise as well. The sessions provide a wonderful opportunity for our Belgian DH community to come together, to network, and to learn from one another. We do hope you’ll join us!  

The series is jointly organized by Prof. Julie Birkholz (Ghent University and KBR), Prof. Margherita Fantoli (KU Leuven), and Dr. Leah Budke (KU Leuven). Questions can be addressed to leah.budke@kuleuven.be or julie.birkholz@ugent.be.  

On Monday 22 November the second session of the DH Virtual Discussion Group for Early Career Researchers in Belgium will take place (via Zoom at 15:00-16:30 CET). This session follows on a successful first session of the Fall edition where we had an attendance of 27 individuals from the Belgian DH community. We are certain the next session will be as engaging and interesting as the first! 

Monday’s speaker is Dr. Joren Six from Ghent University, whose “Under-the-Hood” presentation is titled “Demystifying Deep Learning: Automatically Labeling a Corpus of Field Recordings.” The following abstract provides an overview of Joren’s research interests and his planned talk for our discussion group: 

During the last decade learning based algorithms have improved significantly. Advances in computer vision are the prime example. These advances offer tantalizing prospects also for DH research. Unfortunately it is hard to apply these techniques, even if your DH research problem falls well within the capabilities of these algorithms. In this talk the aim is to demystify these techniques and how advances in image recognition can be used in practice for automatically labeling corpora.  More concretely I will focus on an application to label short fragments of field recordings into ‘speech’ ‘solo singing’ ‘group singing’ or ‘instrumental music’. 

If you would like to register for this session, you can do so by joining our mailing list. If you have already registered for our mailing list, then there is no need to register again—you are already receiving all our updates and will receive the link to join the Zoom meeting on Monday 22 November.  

If you know any early career researchers who might be interested in attending our discussion group series, please direct them to our registration page. All are welcome to attend! We strive to maintain an informal atmosphere where even those with little to no DH expertise can feel comfortable learning and participating in the discussion. We welcome those with more developed expertise as well. The sessions provide a wonderful opportunity for our Belgian DH community to come together, to network, and to learn from one another. We do hope you’ll join us! 

The series is jointly organized by Prof. Julie Birkholz (Ghent University and KBR), Prof. Margherita Fantoli (KU Leuven), and Dr. Leah Budke (KU Leuven). Questions can be addressed to leah.budke@kuleuven.be or julie.birkholz@ugent.be. 

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! This series is jointly organized by the KU Leuven Libraries Artes DH Commons and the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities. This Fall 2021 edition follows a successful first year of the series and marks the third edition.  

While the last year and a half has proved challenging for so many of us in diverse ways, the DH Virtual Discussion Group was a testament to the benefits of technology, allowing many people all over Belgium who are interested in digital tools or methods to come together and learn from one another in a safe virtual space. As a result, we were not only able to obtain a better overview of the diverse DH activities being undertaken in Belgium, but we were also able to bring this dynamic community into contact and to network in ways that were otherwise impossible. We hope the third edition of this series will serve to further foster this network by continuing to provide a virtual space to share knowledge and skills and to welcome new researchers into the Belgian DH community.  

Our three 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 which implements a given tool, approach, or platform. This is not meant to be a 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 about other, related ongoing projects that are implementing similar functionalities. This “Under-the-Hood” session format will allow 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. It also allows us to learn about the diverse projects being done in the Benelux region related to digital humanities! (An added bonus!)   

The following sessions are planned for the Fall 2021 semester:  

1 – Monday October 25 from 15h – 16h30 CEST 

Sven Lieber from the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), whose presentation is titled “Harvesting Social Media Heritage,” is the first volunteer from our community. As Sven’s talk will highlight, public discourse in the twenty-first century takes place on the web. Social media can be collected as high-quality structured data and analysed by using your favorite data science tools. In Sven’s session he will first introduce the BESOCIAL project of the Royal Library of Belgium KBR, which aims to develop a sustainable social media archiving strategy for Belgium. He will present tools that exist for social media harvesting and discuss which tool they have chosen to use at the KBR and why. The second hands-on part of the session will include a demonstration of how you can use the tool Social Feed Manager to schedule automatic harvests from a user-friendly user interface and export collected data for further use. 

2 – Monday November 22 from 15h – 16h30 CET 

Speaker: Joren Six from Ghent University
Title: “Demystifying Deep Learning: Automatically Labeling a Corpus of Field Recordings”
Abstract: During the last decade learning based algorithms have improved significantly. Advances in computer vision are the prime example. These advances offer tantalizing prospects also for DH research. Unfortunately it is hard to apply these techniques, even if your DH research problem falls well within the capabilities of these algorithms. In this talk the aim is to demystify these techniques and how advances in image recognition can be used in practice for automatically labeling corpora.  More concretely I will focus on an application to label short fragments of field recordings into ‘speech’ ‘solo singing’ ‘group singing’ or ‘instrumental music’.

4 – Monday December 13 from 15h – 16h30 CET 

Speaker: Rudy Jos Beerens from KU Leuven
Title: “From Archival Source to Structured Data: A Practical Introduction to Project Cornelia’s (Slow) Digital Art History”
Abstract: In this session, Rudy Jos Beerens (KU Leuven) discloses how Project Cornelia – an ongoing digital art history project led by Koenraad Brosens (www.projectcornelia.be) – translates messy archival sources into structured data suitable for computational analysis. This will be done in three parts. In the first part, Jos will briefly present Project Cornelia’s mission to come to a more inclusive understanding of early modern Flemish “art worlds”. In the second part, he will discuss how the Cornelia relational database was developed to accomplish this mission and take a closer look at how this database translates written archival records into usable and structured data. Finally, in the third part, Jos will demonstrate how the collected data can then be analyzed using existing tools such as MySQL and Gephi and the custom-build tool NAHR.

Some practical matters and registration: 

All of our sessions will again be held on Zoom, and you will receive the link to the virtual meeting room on the day of the discussion.  

There are an increasing number of conferences and workshops in DH, and we would like to ensure that you are aware of these opportunities. We will start every session in the future with a moment for individuals to share news about upcoming lectures, workshops, seminars, and conferences; and we will include an extra box on the Padlet (a link to the Padlet will be communicated in the email before the session) where you can also post these.  

If you would like to register or invite other colleagues to join, please fill out the registration form for the mailing list here. Please note, if you have already received email correspondence about the Fall 2021 series, 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 Zoom link and any additional materials 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. 

How can I present my own work? 

For those of you who would like an opportunity to share your DH ideas and projects, we hope you will consider volunteering for one of these sessions. You do not need to be an expert to present: you can be the PI, a researcher, a PhD candidate, or a master’s student. Please use this as an opportunity to present your work at any stage. ALL are welcome to share and receive feedback. We want to stress that these projects should be given and received in a welcoming environment where we do not judge each other harshly, but rather provide encouragement, advice, and on-topic questions. If you would like to support our community by giving a presentation about a tool, project, or workflow that you have used or developed, please get in touch (leah.budke@kuleuven.be, margherita.fantoli@kuleuven.be, or julie.birkholz@ugent.be) and let us know you are interested. 

Merisa Martinez, our DH expert and keeper of the DH Commons, and prof. dr. Julie Birkholz of the Ghent Center for Digital Humanities and the Royal Library of Belgium’s newly formed Digital Research Lab join forces again to host new sessions of the virtual DH discussion group for early career researchers in Belgium.

For this Spring Semester the format will be “Under the Hood” sessions, which entails a volunteer from the DH community providing a fifteen minute overview of a digital project which implements a given tool, approach, or platform.

The DH Virtual Discussion Groups will take place on the following dates and times during the Spring Semester 2021:

1. Thursday 25 March (15h – 16h30);
2. Thursday 22 April (15h – 16h30);
3. Thursday 27 May (15h – 16h30).

These sessions will again be held on Zoom, and you will receive the link to the virtual meeting room on the day of the discussion.

If you would like to join please register here.

The DH Commons (Merisa Martinez and Demmy Verbeke) and prof. dr. Julie Birkholz of the Ghent Center for Digital Humanities and the Royal Library of Belgium’s newly formed Digital Research Lab will organize a virtual DH discussion group for early career researchers in Belgium.

With the goal of collaborating despite Covid-19, we are going to meet online three times in the first semester of this academic year. Julie and Merisa will moderate three 90 minute sessions on:

1. Tuesday 13 October from 15:00 – 16:30;
2. Tuesday 17 November from 15:00 – 16:30;
3. Monday 7 December from 15:00 – 16:30.

Due to the linguistic diversity of our community, these sessions will be held in English. They will cover podcasts, videos, and texts that are relevant to themes in DH. You do not need to be any kind of expert in DH to join in – all you need is a willingness to participate and the desire to meet some new colleagues.

Feel free to sign up here for one (or all!) of these sessions. Once you’ve registered, you’ll get an email with further information, including the readings/podcasts/videos and the set-up of the discussions.