Two more Digital Humanities projects awarded by AI Labs Call to Action

The second ‘call to action’ of the AI Labs at UU has resulted in two more Digital Humanities projects being funded.

AI Labs

In the AI Labs at Utrecht University, academic researchers collaborate with external partners on societal issues that involve artificial intelligence and/or data science. With the AI Labs’ ‘call to action‘. UU encourages collaborations between researchers from the faculties of Science, Humanities and Geosciences and others, with external partners. The three AI Lab-themes for this are AI & Sustainability, AI & Life Sciences and AI & Digital Humanities.

Collaborations between the Humanities and Computer Science

Projects funded by the AI Lab on the theme of AI & Digital Humanities, focus on three themes at the intersection of Humanities and Computer Science: (a) personalization and (individual) autonomy, (b) truth and trust, and (c) cultural, social and personal access. Each project involves academic researchers from the Faculty of Humanities and from the Department of Information Sciences, as well as societal partners who contribute financially and intellectually. After the first call (Fall 2021), three projects have been awarded. After the most recent (second) call, two more projects in AI & Digital Humanities have been awarded:

•  Employing text classification models for journalistic inquiry on public debates, by Karin van Es, Mirko Tobias Schäfer and Joris Veerbeek (all Utrecht Data School), Kees van Deemter (Information and Computing Sciences), Ayoub Bagheri (Methodology and Statistics), Beatrice de Graaf and Pim Huijnen (both History); the aims of this research project shaped into a PhD position are (a) to develop and test strategies for using automatic text classification in a journalistic setting, and (b) to use text classification models to study public debates and the dynamics of social media. The project is co-financed by the Dutch journalistic weekly De Groene Amsterdammer. They will use the results and the models developed within the context of this PhD project for a series of articles within the branch “Data & Debate”.

• Detecting and preventing low-literacy among Dutch 12-15 year-old, by Els Stronks (Languages, Literature and Communication), Henk Aarts and Hans Marien (both Social and Behavioural Sciences), and Mehdi Dastani (Information and Computing Sciences); the aim of this project is to design and develop AI tools for detecting and preventing low literacy in Dutch children, and for providing adequate and personalized support for improving literacy (with the Foundation for Open Speech Technology, Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Royal Library, Stichting Lezen, and other potential partners).

The third cut-off date for project proposals is on 1 September 2022. Look here for more information.