Infrastructure

No centre is an island, and we rely on a vast landscape of networks, tools, people and resources to deliver support to our community. Our work encompasses identifying, connecting to, supporting and sometimes developing effective digital research infrastructure. This year, we were delighted to begin working more closely with technical experts across EFI and CAHSS, pooling our knowledge and skills within the EFI Research Technology Service. We were also pleased to support the University of Edinburgh in becoming a member of DARIAH-EU, a major European network for digital research, and to continue our support of Programming Historian.

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University of Edinburgh becomes Dariah Cooperating partner

In March 2024, the University of Edinburgh became a cooperating partner of DARIAH-EU, a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) that empowers research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge. We’re excited about the collaborative opportunities that membership brings, and we look forward to working more closely with other digital research hubs and centres of expertise across the UK and Europe. DARIAH membership also offers new opportunities for us to share our work via DARIAH-Campus, working groups and other initiatives in the coming years.

Growing technical capacity within EFI

We were delighted to welcome Dr Alexis Pister this year, who joined us as EFI's Data Visualisation Engineer. Alexis will be working within the EFI makerspace to support access to visualisation tools and software. He works with CDCS as part of the Research Technology Service, and engages with the VisHub research group based in Design Informatics.

Find out more about the EFI Research Technology Service (UoE access only)

DARIAH Day 2024

This year, we worked with the other UK cooperating partners (the Universities of Brighton, Exeter and Leeds; Kings College London and the School of Advanced Study, University of London) to programme and deliver UK DARIAH Day, held at the University of Leeds. The event brought together researchers and practitioners with an interest in Digital Humanities to consider opportunities and challenges around research infrastructures in the UK, showcase current tools and projects, and build national and regional networks. Highlights of the event included a keynote from Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructures Services at The British Library and a director of DARIAH; a project showcase and collaboration catalyst; and an opportunity to discuss the UK's digital research landscape, including opportunities for enhancing infrastructure in the future.

Supporting Transkribus

We are founding members of the READ COOP, a purpose-driven co-operative, which supports the Transkribus platform for handwriting recognition. Transkribus is a valuable tool that enables researchers to digitise, analyse and publish historical documents. We support use of Transkribus for University of Edinburgh researchers, and can offer user seats, credits, guidance and support.

Find out more about Trankribus

Programming Historian

We are proud to be institutional partners of Programming Historian again this year. As gold-tier partners. we worked together on delivering masterclasses and silent discos. Programming Historian has now published over 250 digital humanities methods lessons online. Over the past 12 months, they have published a total of 23 new lessons, of which 13 are originals and 10 are translations.