On Tuesday 3 June, the pre-conference workshop day takes place in the NU Building of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. There are a number of workshops on offer covering many topics, tools, and methods in digital humanities. You are free to choose either a full day workshop or combine a morning offering with an afternoon offering. Below you find the tentative schedule with links to workshop descriptions.
W01- Working with colonial Digital Cultural Heritage. Approaches, Tools, and Transnational Insights (Half day)
- Organizers: Lorella Viola & Aodhán Kelly, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
- Location: tbd
Introduction
This workshop, titled Working with colonial digital cultural heritage: Approaches, Tools, and Transnational Insights, takes place within the NWO funded research project PICCH – POLYVOCAL INTERPRETATION OF CONTESTED COLONIAL HERITAGE. It also intersects with the Dutch Sectorplan theme Cultural Heritage & Identity. PICCH explores how archival material created in a colonial mindset can be re-appropriated and re-interpreted to become an effective source for decolonization and the basis for a future inclusive society.
The event will focus on understanding the nature of archival materials related to colonial pasts, analysing user group needs, and examining how archives are mobilised by diverse creators. It aims to establish a framework for rethinking the management, access, and utilisation of digital cultural heritage in ways that address historical imbalances and promote decolonization. Furthermore, it will provide an opportunity to lay the groundwork for future collaborative projects and grant applications, building sustainable networks across academic, societal, and institutional contexts.
Expected Outcomes
By the end of the workshop, participants will have:
Enhanced their understanding of the colonial histories embedded in digital archives.
Gained practical experience in using technology to analyse and contextualise archival materials.
Identified key insights into user needs and engagement strategies for inclusive archival practices.
Developed a transnational perspective on archival similarities and differences.
Contributed to building a collaborative network focused on decolonizing digital cultural heritage.
Target Audience
The workshop is designed for academics, archivists, technologists, cultural practitioners, and activists working in the fields of digital heritage, colonial studies, and decolonization. It will also benefit institutions and individuals interested in the ethical management and dissemination of digital archives.
Workshop Duration: 3 hours
Registration
Indication of Interest via this google form (no commitment yet, this is for organizational purposes): https://forms.gle/LLGedNg2QmkgNkcw8
For questions and information please contact Lorella Viola l.viola@vu.nl and/or Aodhán Kelly a.f.kelly@vu.nl
W02 – Contextualizing and Connecting Collections of Letters (CCCL) (Full day)
- Organizers: Judith Brouwer, Maria Eskevich, Bente Frissen, Juliette Huygen
- Location: tbd
About the workshop
In this workshop, we aim to explore the affordances developments in the field of digital humanities have established in relation to epistolary scholarship. In what ways can we enrich collections of letters to help guide researchers and a broader audience in the exploration and use of this particular type of historic data? We will supply the workshop participants with use cases provided by previous and ongoing partner projects within the Huygens Institute to aid shared thinking, hands-on experience and dialogues on best practices.
We zoom in on the following three subtopics: i) current developments concerning the use of metadata and restricted vocabularies and ontologies; ii) desirable and attainable enrichments to contextualize collections of letters; iii) imaginable and beneficial crossovers between related but non-epistolary collections and the added value of establishing such broader context.
Contact detail: data@huygens.knaw.nl
W03 – Storing oral and qualitative interview data for reuse (Half day)
- Organizers: Marijn Braam (Sprekende Geschiedenis), Maarten Heerlien (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Norah Karrouche (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, workshop coordinator, n.f.f.karrouche@vu.nl), Widia Mahabier (DANS), Jetze Touber, DANS
- Location: tbd
To prepare for the workshop, participants are requested to complete this form before 27 May.
About the workshop
Qualitative interview collections and oral history data are rarely stored for reuse in a way that allows them to realize their full potential as FAIR datasets. SSH-researchers are not always well versed in the concept of FAIR data, may struggle with privacy and ethical issues, are not aware how and where exactly they can deposit their interview collections as reusable data, and often can’t gauge the value of opening up their own data for reuse by others, as well as the value of reusing existing datasets themselves. In the NWO TDCC Bottleneck project ‘StoRe. Storing oral history data for Reuse across communities’, we collect existing knowledge on digital oral history in the Netherlands, including OH-Core and OH-SMArt, and investigate the workflows of scholars and heritage professionals in the Netherlands who collect and/or use oral histories in their work. The goal is to raise awareness and ensure that (oral history) interview collections are deposited in accordance with the FAIR principles to further enhance and intensify the reuse of oral history data, e.g. through standardized use of formats and metadata. This workshop will share the first insights of the project and invite participants to contribute their experiences and knowledge.
Goals
At the end of this workshop, participants can:
• identify the available infrastructure and guidelines for (oral history) interview collections in the Netherlands
• understand the implications of the FAIR data principles for (oral history) interview collections in the Netherlands
• take reuse into consideration in the design and execution of interview projects
• reflect on the methodological consequences of working with existing (oral history) interview collections
• add their own (oral history) interview collection to the DANS Data Station Social Sciences and Humanities
Target audience
The workshop is open to information specialists, data managers, developers, heritage professionals and researchers of all levels. No prior experience with data management is expected of researchers. Participants who collect interview data are encouraged to bring their own data, but those who are at the beginning stages of their projects and do not have data to deposit yet, are more than welcome to join.
Programme
13.00 – 13.30 Welcome and introduction to reuse in oral history research (Norah Karrouche)
13.30 – 14.15 StoRe: Digital infrastructure for oral history interview data in the Netherlands: challenges and opportunities (interactive lecture, Maarten Heerlien, Marijn Braam)
14.15 – 14.30 Break
14.30 – 15.30 Depositing data at DANS I: metadata and thesauri (instruction and hands-on work, Jetze Touber)
15.30 – 16.30 Depositing data at DANS II: GDPR and Data Access Protocol (instruction and hands-on work, Widia Mahabier)
16.30 – 17.00 Reflection and concluding remarks (all)
Please note: during the hands-on part where we deposit data, we make use of the DANS Data Station Social Sciences and Humanities, a Dutch data repository. You will need to create an account in this repository, using one of the following options:
• Your account of a Dutch research institute (SURFconext)
• Your ORCID
• Your Google-account
• Your GitHub-account
You can find more information on how to create an account here.
W04 – Workshop: Design Qualitative Research on Large Text Corpora using I-Analyzer (Half day)
More information forthcoming..
W05 – Let’s talk FAIR: (Re)using FAIR vocabularies and schemas in humanities and social sciences research (Half day)
- Organizers: Menzo Windhouwer, Liliana Melgar, Angelica Maineri and André Valdestilhas
- Location: tbd
This workshop introduces the main concepts around FAIR vocabularies. “Vocabulary” is a broad concept that encompasses a wide range of knowledge representation types such as term lists, classification systems, thesauri, schemas, or ontologies (to name some of the most well-known). We will also discuss the main concepts around FAIR and FAIR assessments for vocabularies. Besides introducing the concepts, the workshop provides hands-on guidance on how to find existing vocabularies using the “SSH FAIR vocabulary registry”. It also includes practical guidelines and/or exercises for creating, publishing, (re)using vocabularies and/or assessing the FAIR-ness of vocabularies, depending on the participants interests.
Expected outcomes
- Participants will gain knowledge about FAIR, FAIR assessments, and vocabularies in a conceptual and practical way
- Participants will learn about and give input to the FAIR vocabulary registry for the Humanities and Social sciences (search, browse, (re)use and include vocabularies in the registry)
- Participants will receive guidance tailored to their needs in regard to (FAIR) vocabularies
The workshop will be given by
- Menzo Windhouwer (PhD): : lead software engineer Structured Data at the Digital Infrastructure department of the KNAW Humanities Cluster and software developer at CLARIN ERIC (https://www.windhouwer.nl/menzo/professional/index.html)
- Liliana Melgar (PhD): information scientist, data specialist at the Digital Infrastructure department of the KNAW Humanities Cluster (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2003-4200)
- Angelica Maineri (PhD): social scientist, data manager at the Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovation (ODISSEI) consortium (https://angelicamaineri.github.io/)
Target Participants
- Humanities and social sciences researchers
- Data stewards
- Cultural heritage professionals
Level
- The level will be tailored to the participants, for that purpose, we ask you to please Indicate your interests here (this is for organizational purposes): https://forms.office.com/e/vbaKXEn8fe
Technical Requirements
- Participants should bring their own laptops
Contact details: Liliana Melgar (liliana.melgar@di.huc.knaw.nl)
W06 – Multilingualism meets Language Variation and Change: BoF Discussions, Lightning Talks, and Networking (Half day)
- Organizers: Lorella Viola (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb (Universität des Saarlandes)
- Location: tbd
Endorsed by ACL Special Interest Group on Language Technologies for the Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities (SIGHUM) https://sighum.wordpress.com
Description
As digital environments become more globalized, understanding how multilingual knowledge is produced and represented across time raises the need to sustained, critical engagement from digital humanities (DH) scholars and practitioners.
The Special Interest Group for the Humanities (SIGHUM, https://sighum.wordpress.com/ ) has long been committed to exploring these issues by fostering collaborations and providing a platform for dialogue among DH practitioners and scholars. This workshop will create an interactive and collaborative space to share research, tools, and practices across DH fields dealing with multilingual productions.
The workshop will feature a dynamic mix of Birds of a Feather (BoF) discussions, lightning talks, and networking activities. Participants will reflect on key challenges in multilingual approaches to language variation and change showcasing projects, sharing experiences, presenting their work, and fostering future collaborations.
This workshop will:
- Facilitate critical discussions on the challenges and opportunities of multilingualism and language variation and change.
- Highlight ongoing research, tools, and projects that address linguistic diversity and inclusivity in digital spaces.
- Connect researchers, developers, and practitioners working on multilingual DH and knowledge production.
- Foster collaborative opportunities and strengthen networks across institutions and disciplines.
- Identify actionable priorities and strategies for addressing multilingual barriers in DH research and practice.
Registration
Indication of Interest via this google form (no commitment yet, this is for organizational purposes): https://forms.gle/fdxGNCgNtzkHc74B9
For questions and information please contact Lorella Viola l.viola@vu.nl and/or Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb s.degaetano@mx.uni-saarland.de
W07 – Impresso Datalab Workshop. Programmatic Access and Annotation Services for Multilingual and Multimodal Historical Media Collections
- Organisers: Marten Düring, Kaspar Beelen and Caio Mello
- Location: tbd
Description:
This workshop/hackathon is organised by the interdisciplinary research project Impresso Media Monitoring of the Past — Beyond Borders which leverages an unprecedented corpus of newspaper and radio archives and uses machine learning to pursue a paradigm shift in the processing, semantic enrichment, representation, exploration and study of historical media across modalities, time, languages, and national borders.
Participants will be introduced to the new Impresso Datalab, which enables custom analyses of the Impresso corpus and the semantic indexation of external document collections also with the help of models created by the project. You will have the opportunity to:
- Experiment with the Impresso workflow, by combining the powerful interface of the Impresso Web App and the customisable capabilities of the Impresso Datalab.
- Explore Impresso’s models and pipelines for news agency recognition, language identification, OCR quality assessment, visualising entities in maps and networks, among others. Access to the data and models is provided via the Impresso Public API, a dedicated Python library and via HuggingFace.
- Access a new collection of Jupyter notebooks designed to facilitate analysis of the Impresso corpus, expand the analytical capabilities of the Impresso Web App and to inspire new ways of studying digitised documents.
- Use Impresso models to enrich external research data.
Target audience
students, researchers and practitioners interested in computational approaches to study digitised historical materials. Impresso Dalab strives to offer accessible educational resources and notebook templates to researchers at any level of coding proficiency.
Technical Requirements
Participants should bring laptops
Contact details: marten.during@uni.lu; caio.mello@uni.lu
W08 – So everything is biased … now what?! Introducing the Bias-Aware Framework for Dataset Creation (Half day)
Organizers: Amber Zijlma, Mrinalini Luthra, Lodewijk Petram and Manjusha Kuruppath (Huygens Institute)
Location: tbd
Description
In the digital humanities, datasets inherit and perpetuate biases through multiple channels: individual and institutional biases, discriminatory language in archives, unequal representation in collection practices, and algorithmic biases in AI-assisted processing. These biases are compounded throughout the research process, yet the term “bias” itself lacks a clear definition, often causing what one may term “bias paralysis.”
Combatting Bias, approaches bias not simply as an error, but as properties and inclinations of data that shape knowledge production. By explicitly describing these conditions of production, researchers can improve transparency, improve dataset documentation, and enable more informed reuse of their data. Combatting Bias, thus proposes treating “bias” as a productive category of analysis for digital humanities research through the development of a “Bias-Aware Framework” for dataset creation. The framework has three components:
Bias Thesaurus: a comprehensive list of the concepts connected to bias (such as representation, offensive language, FAIR, CARE, silences, etc.) that creates a shared vocabulary for discussing bias across disciplines.
Bias-Aware Data Lifecycle Model: Showing where and how bias manifests at different research stages, allowing for targeted interventions at critical points.
Guidelines and Toolkit: Reflective questions at each stage of the dataset lifecycle, illustrative examples, and “good-better-best” recommendations for bias analysis, description, and mitigation.
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the Bias-Aware Framework through hands-on exercises with real datasets, structured documentation templates, and ethical intervention strategies. Participants will work with concrete examples such as offensive terminology in colonial archives and addressing archival silences in historical records.
Outcomes
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify multiple forms of bias in their datasets using the bias thesaurus
- Understand how biases compound across different stages of the dataset lifecycle
- Learn to communicate about bias with stakeholders in a productive way
- Document biases transparently using templates
- Implement “good-better-best” mitigation strategies appropriate to their resources to reduce and describe biases
Target Participants
- Dataset creators and users
- Digital humanities researchers
- Cultural heritage professionals
Technical Requirements
- Participants should bring laptops
- No technical expertise required
- Option to work with own dataset, or example datasets will be provided
Indication of Interest via this form (no commitment yet, this is for organizational purposes): https://forms.office.com/e/C1CDAKwsFh
Contact Detail: combattingbias@gmail.com or mrinalini.luthra@huygens.knaw.nl