We are proud to share the winning projects for the 2026 CDCS Digital Research Awards. These exceptional projects highlight the diverse disciplines, methods and approaches researchers across our community are taking to advance knowledge, support change, and create positive outcomes.
CDCS Digital Research Prizes 2026
Joint Winner
A data-led digital pedagogy in practice: Implementing data-driven learning in a Chinese university context
"A great practical project, that marries theory and implementation."
Joint Winner
Digital Ghosts - Practice-research and exhibition
"An outstanding piece of work - both in creative terms but also in its clear and effective method for communicating the transient status of websites and digital artifacts."
Winner
ICPSR-238545: Preschool Suspension and Expulsion Legislature in Oregon USA, 2021-2022
"This project stands out for the strong standard of metadata recorded, which ensures the dataset is transparent, searchable, and genuinely reusable for research, policy, and public understanding."
Access the ICPSR-238545 dataset
Highly Commended
Winner
Digital Ghosts
"An outstanding piece of work - both in creative terms but also in its clear and effective method for communicating the transient status of websites and digital artifacts."
Highly Commended
In their Own Time
Go to In their own time
Winner
The UK Co-Benefits Atlas
"This project stands out for its demonstrable influence on policy and practice, having been embedded in Scottish Government statutory guidance, used to support Scotland’s Climate Plan, and applied directly by local authorities."
Joint Winner
Wasteback Machine
"A timely and ambitious project that highlights a little-discussed issue and has made significant impact."
Learn more about the Wasteback Machine
Joint Winner
Opening the Well / Fosgladh an Tobair
"especially significant in the context of an under-resourced language, as it tackles the long-standing problem of data sparsity while at the same time widening access to culturally important oral heritage."
Find out more about Opening the Well
Highly Commended
MultiCoS: A Multilingual Dataset of Connective Semantics with Context–Sentence Compatibility