Interviews | Centre for Digital Humanities

Interview: OpenAlex, a big step towards Open Science?

Utrecht University has published an interview with Open Science specialist drs. Jeroen Bosman (Utrecht University Library) about OpenAlex, the new database for scientific output offering more than 250 million works. Its focus on full openness and availability is why OpenAlex fits in well with the principle of Open Science: the striving for an academic world […] Read more

Interview with CDH director Hugo Quené: past, present and future of the CDH

In 2020, the Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) at Utrecht University was officially launched. In this interview, prof. dr. Hugo Quené, Professor of Quantitative Methods of Empirical Research in the Humanities and CDH founding director, reflects on the past four years since its inception, and shares his thoughts on the future. How should digital humanities evolve […] Read more

Interview with Tijmen Baarda (CDH), Leonard Rutgers & Stefan Dingemans: interactive map of Jewish migration in Europe in Roman times

“Digital research is the future, also in humanities” Professor Leonard Rutgers and his colleagues research how Jewish migrants spread over Europe in Roman times. Thanks to a grant of the FAIR Research IT programme, the team was able to digitise a large number of sources and incorporate them into an interactive map. Other scholars can now use […] Read more

SURF interview: prof. dr. Antal van den Bosch on AI and GPT-NL

Prof. dr. Antal van den Bosch has given an interview to SURF, the cooperative association of Dutch educational and research institutions. The interview is titled ‘AI lets scientists work magic with language’. In the interview, he speaks about his career in AI and his thoughts on the future of AI. He also shares his ideas […] Read more

UU interview: Core team Human Artificial Intelligence

An interview with Dr. Pim Huijnen and Dr. Evelyn Wan has been published on Intranet, the internal website for Utrecht University staff. Together with Dr. Tejaswini Deoskar and Dr. Dominik Klein, Pim and Evelyn make up the core team Human Artificial Intelligence. The interview is part of the series: ‘educational innovation through the eyes of the four […] Read more

Interview with Karin van Es and Dennis Nguyen: Exploring the potential of data donations

Data donation presents a new and unique approach to collecting digital trace data, liberating researchers from platform dependencies and restrictions. A consortium of six Dutch universities has now started building its own digital data donation infrastructure. Within this initiative, Karin van Es and Dennis Nguyen from the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University, supported by […] Read more

Interview Lorena De Vita: Using Transkribus to decrypt the diaries of a German jurist

During her research Lorena De Vita stumbled upon the personal diaries, spanning from 1932 to 1989, of Otto Küster, a German jurist who dedicated a significant portion of his professional career seeking reparations for Holocaust survivors. His handwriting, however, was almost illegible. De Vita participated in a Trankskribus workshop offered by the UB and CDH […] Read more

Data School on impact: ‘We want to take part in shaping the digital society’

Data School’s Mirko Schäfer and Iris Muis are keen to push for a broader definition of impact at university level. Although they do not find the time to publish as often as they would like, their research is having significant impact, with their work used in Austria, Sweden, Finland and Greece. Schäfer: ‘If you really want to achieve an impact, […] Read more

FAIR Research IT interview with Berit Janssen

This interview is part of a series conducted by UU FAIR research IT, aimed at showcasing the impact of their projects on FAIR research IT. This TextMiNER project, led by the CDH Research Software Lab, has been made possible through a FAIR Research IT Innovation Grant. ‘You get much more out of a text corpus with […] Read more

Historical fortress wall discovered in man’s backyard using ‘georeferenced’ map from Utrecht University

Dutch version of this article. While deepening a pond in his garden, Erwin Jesterhoudt from the Zeeland village of Philippine, stumbled upon a piece of an old wall in early October. Using a digital historical map from Utrecht University, he learned that it was a section of an 18th-century fortress wall. The Centre for Digital […] Read more

Stories from the Lab: AI & Media Lab – Beyond the frenzy of the day

The AI & Media Lab, a cooperation between Utrecht University, HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and Media Perspectives, works on exploring AI applications in the media and the gaming world. Operating under the umbrella of AI Labs, it actively collaborates with a varied network of partners from the IT sector and creative industry. In […] Read more

Interview with Jeroen Bakker and Sander Prins: A simple way of harvesting and analyzing social media data with 4CAT

In this series of interviews the FAIR Research IT Innovation Fund shows what contribution projects can make to FAIR research IT. The research teams of the projects have received a grant from them. Good news for scientists whose technological skills are limited, but who want to work with social media data in their research: now […] Read more

Interview Jeroen Salman: “The network allows researchers to learn about each other’s expertise”

Between 2016 and 2018, Jeroen Salman led the EDPOP project. What digital techniques has he used in the project? What role did Utrecht University Library and the Research Software Lab of the Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) play in EDPOP? And are such roles ever played out? The EDPOP project (European Dimensions of popular print culture) is […] Read more

Interview with Edo Storm, winner of the Digital History Thesis Award 2023

Edo Storm used a combination of computational methods and close reading to conduct research into the history of the term ‘the West’. It earned him this year’s Digital History Thesis Award. Storm: ‘I wouldn’t have seen the big overarching narrative without this computational method.’ Fellow students sometimes joked about him and his ‘digital stuff’ when […] Read more

CDH Interview: How did we perceive animals and plants in the Netherlands over the past centuries? Language model GysBERT assists with mapping it out

How did a sixteenth-century Dutch inhabitant experience the animals and plants around him? And how did that change in the centuries that followed? When did the rabbit change from food into pet and the horse from means of transportation into pleasure animal? Literary texts, scientific texts and folk tales, in particular, offer a unique glimpse […] Read more

Open Science Recognition and Rewards video: Digital Humanities Lab fulfills unique role between academics and support staff

Utrecht University presents its new vision on Recognition and Rewards in a series of videos. Our developers Luka van der Plas, Berit Janssen and head of DH-IT Andre van Kooij explain in this video how the Digital Humanities Lab (DHLab) fulfills a unique hybrid role between academics and support staff. The scientific developers of the DHLab develop […] Read more

Data School as ethical guide for the digital government

Iris Muis has just returned from a trip to the European Parliament, where she presented the Fundamental Rights & Algorithms Impact Assessment (FRAIA) together with Mirko Schäfer from Data School. Muis: ‘Organizations are increasingly using algorithms to make work more efficient and to hire fewer people. But if you use technology, you also have a […] Read more

Interview: How Mirko Tobias Schäfer relates to the theme of the conference “Rethink Impact”

This year’s theme of the ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) 2022 conference in Denmark is ‘Rethink Impact’. The organization of the conference interviewed Mirko Schäfer on this theme. Schäfer is cofounder and Faculty of Science Lead of the Utrecht Data School and Associate Professor at UU. Read the interview here. […] Read more

One year of Living Lab Digital Humanities, how does it work in practice?

Joint programming in Python, the best place for hybrid meetings and fiddling with screens and microphones. The Living Lab Digital Humanities, a collaboration of the University Library and the Centre for Digital Humanities, was launched a year ago. Who uses this ‘workshop’ for digital research and education? What can you do there and what could be […] Read more

Interview with Suzanne Ros, winner of the Digital history thesis award

During her research into the term ‘Anthropocene’ for her bachelor’s thesis in history, Suzanne Ros discovered that the subject was much larger than she had expected. She decided to dive into digital methods that could help her with her analysis, and she taught herself Python through YouTube videos. Successfully. She won the recently created thesis […] Read more