The goal is to create an international junction of research and teaching in digital humanities in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
“Heldig is a networking project for digital humanities. We welcome everyone who is interested in digital humanities with open arms," says Professor Eero Hyvönen who has been appointed director of Heldig.
Increasingly extensive digital resources and their processing offer new research topics and challenge researchers to develop and use new computational methods. Researching digitisation as a phenomenon is also important, in terms of developing new processes and applications as well as evaluating the impacts of new technologies.
Heldig's duties span from research to education and society..
“The mission of Heldig is to provide researchers and students with methods, tools, services and education and to develop the kinds of data infrastructures and resources that the digital humanities need. We are also promoting the use of research results in society,” says Hyvönen.
“I hope that the facilities Heldig finds on the City Centre Campus will allow researchers, teachers, students and partners to also connect face-to-face.”
Many disciplines have employed digital resources for years, but more extensive multidisciplinary cooperation could help with the discovery of new relevant research questions as well as the resources and methods needed to answer them.
“The establishment of Heldig is part of the profiling of universities funded by the Academy of Finland, and is one of the University of Helsinki's spearhead projects,” explains Dean Arto Mustajoki from the Faculty of Arts.
Watch the video of Heldig director Eero Hyvönen and Mikko Tolonen, professor of digital humanities, discuss (in Finnish) digital humanities and Heldig: