- Building the Cultural Heritage Cloud (ECCCH): EU Horizon project ECHOES public launch
- ARM Project held a meeting and a workshop in Helsinki
- 2024 Steven Krauwer Award for CLARIN Achievement for the organizers of Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon
- HSSH’s Matti Pohjonen featured in AfriStadi Twin Talks
- Invitation to open hybrid Sampo tutorial: 28.11. How to create a Linked Open Data service and semantic portal for your Cultural Heritage data
- Brown Bag Seminar every Wednesday at 12.15 – next session with Adrian Walsh on 6.11.
Building the Cultural Heritage Cloud (ECCCH): EU Horizon project ECHOES public launch
HSSH, with work led by university researcher Jouni Tuominen from HSSH's Methodological Unit, is a partner in a EU Horizon project led by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), that builds the Cultural Heritage Cloud (ECCCH).
The Cultural Heritage Cloud (ECCCH) is a shared platform designed to provide heritage professionals and researchers with access to data, scientific resources, training, and advanced digital tools tailored to suit their needs. This platform is developed by ECHOES (European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science), a project funded by the European Commission and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) that brings together fragmented communities of the Cultural Heritage field into a new community around the Digital Commons.
The ECHOES public launch event on Monday the 9th September was a great success with over 300 people attending both in person at the Castle of Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France and online. The programme consisted of an introduction and context setting (ECCCH) by a representative from the the European Commission, was followed by an overview of the ECHOES project, the objectives and roles of the four "pillars" of the project, and had two keynote presentations: "Interconnecting knowledge: cultural heritage data from a Digital Humanities perspective" (Sally Chambers, Director, DARIAH-EU) and "Project 'Notre-Dame Numérique': Notre-Dame de Paris: a cathedral of digital data and multidisciplinary knowledge for heritage science" (Livio De Luca, Researcher, CNR).
ARM Project held a meeting and a workshop in Helsinki
HSSH, with work led by university researcher Matti Pohjonen from HSSH’s Methodological Unit, is a partner in a EU Horizon ARM project led by CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute) in Bergen, Norway. The ARM project delves into authoritarian strategies for information control beyond borders. While foreign disinformation receives ample scrutiny, other forms of foreign information manipulation and intervention (FIMI) remain overlooked.
The second ARM project meeting took place in Helsinki from October 2–4, 2024, bringing together participants to discuss key project developments and collaborative goals. On the opening day, attendees had the option to participate in a cybersecurity training led by experts from the Helsinki-Aalto Institute for Cybersecurity.
October 3rd featured a full schedule, starting with an introduction by Director of HSSH, Risto Kunelius., followed by a keynote talk by Professor Iginio Gagliardone on Chinese media influence and comparative research, after which country teams worked on identifying cross-cutting themes. The evening concluded with a dinner hosted by the University of Helsinki team at Restaurant Savotta, followed by optional social events.
The meeting wrapped up on October 4th with starting with a General Assembly for team leaders, followed by sessions on ethics, project updates, and the introduction of new funding calls.
The event fostered productive discussions and paved the way for continued collaboration on the ARM project. “It was such a pleasure to invite the 17 participants to Helsinki, and to HSSH, for two days of active discussions about the project. We developed a clear roadmap ahead for the research and will hope to publish some results about this relevant topic in the near future,“ Matti Pohjonen said.
2024 Steven Krauwer Award for CLARIN Achievement for the organizers of Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon
Organizers of the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon, Mikko Tolonen, Eetu Mäkelä, Jukka Suomela and Jouni Tuominen received the 2024 Steven Krauwer award for CLARIN Achievements.
Mikko Tolonen is a Professor in Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki, Eetu Mäkelä is a Professor in Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki and Datafication Research Program Director at HSSH, Jukka Suomela is an Associate Professor in computer science at Aalto University, and Jouni Tuominen is a University Researcher at HSSH.
The Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon (DHH24) was nominated for its role in bridging computer science, data science, social sciences, and humanities, and offering researchers and students a platform to address complex, real-world issues through interdisciplinary collaboration. Earlier this year, over a ten-day event, participants worked on projects such as measuring Eurovision success, analyzing Enlightenment-era illustrations, examining democracy through parliamentary speeches, and exploring online civil discourse. DHH24 highlighted the power of cross-disciplinary teamwork, guiding participants through a complete research process and showcasing the innovative potential of combining diverse academic skills.
According to Tolonen, organising the hackathon over the years has been "central to digital humanities; it has transformed our foundation, driving us to become more international and interdisciplinary. In many ways, digital humanities and the DHH hackathon have come of age together! It has also been fun. Especially since we introduced the karaoke room."
The award ceremony took place during the 2024 CLARIN Annual Conference, a hybrid event held in Barcelona from 15 to 17 of October. HSSH’s Jouni Tuominen was present at the conference accepting the award on behalf of the Hackathon team.
HSSH’s Matti Pohjonen featured in AfriStadi Twin Talks
The Africa Research Forum for Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Helsinki (AfriStadi) is a space for Africa research in social sciences and humanities and it holds great local and global relevance.
AfriStadi holds Twin Talks that bring together researchers from different disciplines in African Studies to connect their research to an overarching theme.
In October, University Researcher Matti Pohjonen from HSSH’s Methodological Unit participated in the Twin Talks together with Professor Nick Mdika Tembo from the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Malawi.
Matti Pohjonen's talk covered the complexities of researching social media politics in Africa, emphasizing the importance of understanding "context" to avoid oversimplified analyses of digital politics worldwide.
Pohjonen highlighted two main challenges: First, while computational methods can reveal large-scale patterns, they may miss subtle political and cultural nuances. Second, existing theories of digital media, often developed in Western contexts, don't fully address African digital environments. Research in African social media is either sparse or confined to area studies, limiting its impact on broader theoretical development. Drawing on his experience in Ethiopia, Pohjonen illustrated how integrating local political histories and cultural dynamics into research offers deeper insights into digital activism and conflicts, advocating for a more nuanced, context-sensitive approach.
“I am always happy to participate in AfriStadi’s academically engaging events. AfriStadi was initially funded by the HSSH Catalyst Grant, and it is nice to see how it has since emerged into such an established intellectual forum within University of Helsinki on research done on Africa,” Pohjonen said.
Invitation to open hybrid Sampo tutorial: 28.11. How to create a Linked Open Data service and semantic portal for your Cultural Heritage data
Thursday, November 28, 2024, 13:00–16:00 (12:00-15:00 CET)
Aalto University, Espoo, TUAS-house, Maarintie 8, 1007a Learning Hub Atrium (ground floor), and in Zoom.
Since 2002, the Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo) has been involved in 1) developing a national semantic web infrastructure and 2) the "Sampo series" of over 20 Linked Open Data (LOD) services and semantic portals on top of them in use on the Web. This work goes on today as part of the national DARIAH-FI research infrastructure program, pertaining to the LOD work package led by the SeCo group. The goal of this open and free tutorial is to explain in practice how the models, tools, datasets, and portals developed can be used for creating new data services and applications for Digital Humanities research, based on one’s own data available in different formats.
More information:
https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/events/2024/2024-11-28-sampo-tutorial/
Brown Bag Seminar every Wednesday at 12.15 – next session with Adrian Walsh on Wednesday 6.11.
The Methodological Unit of HSSH hosts a weekly event, Brown Bag Seminar, to highlight novel methodological approaches in humanities and social sciences.
The seminars are organized as hybrid events. You’re warmly welcome to join us at the HSSH Seminar Room, Fabianinkatu 24 A, room 524, 5th floor (access via door, not courtyard due to renovations), or on Zoom.
Click here to add the Brown Bag Seminar events directly to your calendar (.ics file).
According to a researcher at the Methodological Unit, Matti Pohjonen, the idea of the meetings “is to introduce methodological innovations and cutting-edge research in various disciplines in an easily accessible manner and have an interdisciplinary discussion in an easy-going atmosphere over lunch.”
Every Wednesday at 12.15. In the next meeting on 6.11. Professor Adrian Walsh from University of New England in Australia will talk about internal validity, external validity and the evaluation of thought experiments in applied ethics and political philosophy. Bring your own lunch, we bring fresh methodological topics!
Read more about the event on our website!