Edward Joseph Gray, Sanita Reinsone, Koraljka Golub, Mikko Tolonen, Johanna Lilja, Inés Matres, Eiríkur Smári Sigurðarson, Olga Holownia, Mari Väina

In honor of DHNB2025’s theme of Digital Dreams and Practices, we propose a workshop on research infrastructure – in essence, how to put into practice the realization of these digital dreams.

Research Infrastructure is a necessity for effective and productive research outcomes, and indeed, it has been recognized as such by the European Commission, who invented the ESFRI Scheme to ensure a strategically-planned, harmonized European Research Area. Nevertheless, while it is one thing to have a continent-wide plan, it is another matter entirely as to how to implement this plan and operate it on a daily basis on a national level. Further complicating matters are different national and regional research traditions, and the need to respond to the needs of the research community – both in terms of technical solutions, and in providing an effective (human) interface to counsel and aid these users in the uptake of solutions. Yet another challenge is ensuring access to data, both in terms of the technical aspects (managing versioning, provenance, long-term preservation, and providing for interoperability) and juridical questions that are inherent to responsible data management.

This workshop will discuss and lay out what the presenters – who have deep experience in the construction of a research infrastructure – feel is necessary to build an effective national research infrastructure for the digital humanities community. It will involve presenters from Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Latvia and is open to all members of the DHNB community looking to build a national research infrastructure for social sciences and humanities.

While not exclusively dedicated to DARIAH, the European Research Infrastructure Consortium dedicated to the arts and humanities, this workshop will focus in large part on how DARIAH’s experiences, both on the European and national level, can be helpful for those countries which wish to launch their own national research infrastructure. Indeed, with ten years of existence and 23 Member countries (as of October 2024), DARIAH represents a successful model to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. DARIAH’s 4 Strategic Pillars, comprising (I) a Marketplace of reusable tools, services, data, and knowledge; (II) Education and Training, (III) Transnational and Transdisciplinary Working Groups, and (IV) Policy and Foresight represent essential components of a research infrastructure – ensuring that the infrastructure provides something useful to researchers, that it ensures its communities are aware of the most recent practices, that it integrates feedback from their needs, and keeps an eye on policy developments to both influence them and best prepare its community for what comes next.

After an introductory talk on what research infrastructure is, and how they fit into the strategic framework of research policy, the workshop will then proceed to presentations that introduce four use-cases on how national research infrastructures have developed, what challenges they faced, and how they build community. Then, we will have a discussion amongst participants to see where they are in the process of building their national research infrastructure, and what their next steps are in realizing the digital dreams of tomorrow.

Target Audience:

The targeted audience of this workshop includes both researchers (though typically those that lead institutions, labs, projects, or are otherwise inclined to think in an infrastructural manner), research engineers, and policymakers from ministries. Our wish is to bring together representatives from all DHNB countries that are building, or beginning to build, their national research infrastructure and give them a forum to share their concerns and receive feedback from our workshop leaders, and the other attendees.

We also seek to gather insights from Ministry officials, particularly from Estonia and other Baltic nations, on the question of research infrastructure. The attendees, in turn, will gain a comprehensive perspective on the impact that a national research infrastructure can provide.

Expected Outcomes:

The goal is to bring together the different stakeholders (users, providers, funders) of the DHNB community that are involved in the construction of a research infrastructure, and give them a forum to exchange, learn, and begin to construct together a plan of action. There is a great diversity of national research infrastructure in the DHNB community, with countries with full-fledged national infrastructures, in the process of building these RIs, and those that are at the very beginning, assembling community and political support. This event, we hope, will help the community share notes, exchange best practices, and start to think about what a research infrastructure ought to look like in the Nordic & Baltic region and beyond.

The hope is that this workshop will both jumpstart countries – particularly the Baltic countries – that are in the process of building a national research infrastructure in digital humanities, and give a forum for currently-established national research infrastructures, and in particular those in the Nordic and Baltic region, to exchange best practices and contacts. Particularly, we hope to profit from the host country’s effort to join DARIAH, which is now on the Estonian Research Infrastructure Roadmap, to give them, and their Latvian and Lithuanian partners, a leg up in the foundation of their national research infrastructures. As well, this workshop will continue the discussions we had in Reykjavik at DHNB 2024, helping to concretize the work being done in Iceland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

Proposed Schedule

1. Opening Address: Services, Strategy, and Scholars: The Role of Research Infrastructure in Enabling Research

2. DARIAH-EU as a Structuring Mechanism for Building National Research Infrastructure

   • Discussion – What do you expect from a Research Infrastructure?

3. (Potential Space for word from Ministerial representatives)

4. National Use Cases for Building Research Infrastructure

   • Latvia

   • Iceland

   • Sweden

   • Finland

5. Panel Discussion from National Research Infrastructure Use Cases

6. Breakout Brainstorming Sessions What does your ideal national Research Infrastructure Look like? What are the major challenges? How good are your contacts with the Ministry? What help would you appreciate, either from other national RIs or ERICs like DARIAH ?

7. Restitution of Breakout-Group Findings

8. Conclusions & Paths Forward

About the organizer

Edward J. Gray is the Research Infrastructure Coordinator at the IR* Huma-Num (CNRS) and the Officer for National Coordination at DARIAH ERIC, the European Research Infrastructure for the Digital Arts and Humanities. He is currently on the Editorial Board for the SSH Open Marketplace, a discovery platform for digital humanities tools and services that was born from the SSHOC Project. He earned his doctorate in history from Purdue University, and he earned a master’s degree in Technologies numériques appliquées à l’histoire (TNAH) at the Ecole nationale des chartes, where he is also chargé de cours.