Invitation for input: Daidalos – A Digital Social Sciences and Humanities Summer/Winter School on Research Software

The CDH Research Software Lab is actively engaged in the ‘Daidalos – A Digital Social Sciences and Humanities Summer/Winter School on Research Software’ project. Daidalos is part of TDCC SSH Bottleneck Projects, and is centered around the development of a Digital Social Sciences and Humanities (Summer/Winter) School. This project is in development and welcomes your participation and feedback; please reach out to the teams if you want to get involved or offer feedback.

Project description

The Daidalos project proposes to develop a Digital Social Sciences and Humanities (Summer/Winter) School (Daidalos). The consortium partners will work together to create a format for a 2-3 week “crash course” in good practices for social scientists and humanities researchers. A group of ~30 researchers will be selected to be part of the first edition of this course with a specific research project. During the course, they will learn about good practices in software development, as well as an introduction to programming, parallel programming, machine learning and/or Natural Language Processing. After the formal training part of the course, one week of on-site consultancy will be available by experienced methodology and software engineering consultants while the researchers work on their projects. 
 
Consortium partners will be providing either consultancy, teaching time, course material or ways to access research tools and data to Daidalos. Software and data used in the course will be taken from / uploaded to the RSD, Ineo or the DANS data station. A dedicated website with all course materials will be set up, as well as a playbook on how to run the programme to ensure the programme’s sustainability.  

Daidalos addresses specific challenges in specified in the TDCC-SSH roadmap, such as (a) lack of awareness, experience and knowledge of good coding and software engineering practices (challenge 1, 3, 4, 6 in the roadmap); (b) a lack of recognition for good practices in research software (challenge 2, 6); (c) scattered and broad domain (challenge 5, 8, 9); (d) strong impact of recent technological developments (challenge 7, 10).

Involved parties so far:
• Netherlands eScience Center – Lieke de Boer, Valentina Azzara
• Utrecht University, CDH Research Software Lab – Jill Briggeman, Hugo Quené, Andre van Kooij
• KNAW Digital Humanities Cluster
• CLARIAH
• ODISSEI

Feedback

Do you want to get involved, know of overlapping initiatives or projects, or have other thoughts to share? Then please get in touch with the primary contact, Lieke de Boer (l.deboer@esciencecenter.nl), at the Netherlands eScience Center and kindly include ssh@tdcc.nl in your message. The consultation period is open until 25 January, 2024.

About TDCC SSH Bottleneck Projects

The TDCC SSH Bottleneck Projects are small-scale, lasting up to 12 months, with a maximum budget of 150.000 euros. Their objectives include promoting FAIR research data and software, increasing awareness about them, and enhancing awareness of available digital data and tools oriented towards Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH). TDCCs, or Thematic Digital Competence Centres, are network-based initiatives set up by the NWO and the Dutch academic community to broker investments into open science projects.