Author: Joan Murphy

Computational approaches to visual and material culture [June 2/3, Oxford, in person – FREE ]

Computational approaches to visual and material culture

Join us for a two-day thematic research event on computational approaches to visual and material culture at Oxford’s Weston Library!

2 June 9:30am-5:00pm to 3 June 9.30am-5:00pm

In-person event: Centre for Digital Scholarship, Weston Library, Oxford

Free event and open to all. Registration required, limited places available. Please follow the link below to register.

Register on Eventbrite

Data/Culture, the Centre for Digital Scholarship (Bodleian Libraries), Digital Scholarship @Oxford, and Mapping the Arts and Humanities (SAS, London) are hosting a two-day thematic research event exploring new ways of working with images, objects, and performances. The event focuses on developing research questions and approaches, using existing tools and resources. Participants will work collaboratively in small groups, supported by Research Software Engineers, and have the opportunity to develop a research idea further through a prize of dedicated technical collaboration. No prior coding experience is required.

Who is this for?

This event is designed for:

  • Arts and Humanities researchers (scholars and postgraduate students)
  • those working with images, objects, archives, or performance materials
  • those interested in exploring new research methods
  • those developing or planning research projects or grant applications

What do you need?

  • An interest in your research question
  • (Optional) a dataset or collection you work with
  • A laptop is desirable but not essential

You do NOT need:

  • coding experience
  • prior knowledge of tools
  • technical expertise

UK-IE DHA Community Interest Group Call [Now Open]

UK-IE DHA Community Interest Group Call

UK-IE DHA is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for new Community Interest Groups (CIGs).

CIGs are community-driven groups organised around a shared research interest, a community of practice, or a key issue within digital humanities. They are central to our aim of fostering a more inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable community.

We warmly invite proposals for new groups. Before applying, please read the full call and complete the application form available here: https://digitalhumanities-uk-ie.org/2026/05/14/cfp-new-cigs-2026/

Key information

  • Deadline: 23:59 (GMT), Monday 29 June 2026
  • Format: PDF submission via email to uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk
  • Notification of outcomes: Friday 24 July 2026
  • Similar proposals may be combined where appropriate

About CIGs

CIGs are flexible and community-led, designed to evolve alongside the field. They:

  • run initially for at least 18 months
  • are open to unlimited participation
  • are shaped by the needs of their members
  • foster communities of practice across the UK and Ireland

We currently have 5 CIGs and will add up to 5 new groups in this round.

Support available

Successful groups receive:

  • access to the CIG Funding Scheme (expanded via thanks to our recently announced UKRI grant)
  • promotion via our channels
  • a dedicated presence on our website
  • opportunities to participate in Association events
  • access to peer support via the Collective
  • opportunities for collaboration and advocacy

If you have any questions, please contact uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk.

MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference – Media and Sustainability [Calls closes May 25th]

MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference

We are pleased to say that due to exceptional demand, we are extending the deadline to submit an abstract for the 2026 MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference, which will take place on 9th September 2026 in the Minghella Studios, University of Reading. The new deadline is Monday 25th May 2026.

This year’s theme is Media and Sustainability and invites postgraduate researchers to explore how media industries, forms, cultures, and research practices endure, adapt, resist or reimagine themselves within unstable or emerging environments. We also encourage reflection on the sustainability of academic and creative labour, and the infrastructures that support media work.  

Participants are encouraged to interpret the conference theme broadly and creatively. Submissions from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives are warmly welcomed, including practice-based work.  

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:  

  • Sustainable media industries: policy, production cultures, funding, and independent practice. 
  • Sustainable creative and research methodologies: slow scholarship, decolonial and feminist methods, ethics of care, collaboration and community partnership. 
  • Environmental sustainability and media: climate communication, ecocinema, eco-media, green production, and environmental representation.  
  • Sustainable archives and preservation: memory, heritage, obsolescence, and care for audiovisual materials.  
  • Sustainable digital technologies and infrastructures: platforms, AI, media infrastructure, resource extraction, and the environmental costs of data.  
  • Sustainable identities and communities: queer, Indigenous, diasporic, and disabled media-making. Visibility, survival, and continuity.  
  • Sustaining the self: wellbeing, burnout, emotional labour, and the lived realities of postgraduate research.   

In recognition of the diverse ways postgraduate researchers work and communicate research, we invite proposals in a range of formats, including:  

  • Paper presentations (15 minutes) 
  • Panel proposals (typically 3-5 named contributors) 
  • Practice-based or creative contributions, including film, audiovisual work, performance or artistic practice 

We particularly welcome work-in-progress and contributions from early-stage postgraduate researchers.  

Submission deadline: Monday 25th May 2026 at midday (GMT)

Submission link: Microsoft Form

Further details can be found here. Alternatively, feel free to email us with any questions.

UK-IE DHA – Pilot small grants scheme info session [18 May @ 11am, online]

UK-IE DHA – Pilot small grants scheme briefing session

We will be holding a briefing session for our pilot small grants scheme on the 18 May between 11.00 & 12.00 (GMT). The session will be hosted by Prof. Jane Winters and Dr. Valentina Vavassori, who will highlight the types of projects we’re looking for and the application criteria. Please come with your questions and ideas! 

The scheme is aimed at early career researchers and practitioners based in the UK and/or Ireland, including independent researchers. Applicants may include collaborators or partners based elsewhere, but the lead applicant must be from Ireland or the UK.

We define early career as:

  • Individuals within eight years of receiving their PhD, or equivalent professional training (e.g. an Archives and Records Association or CILIP accredited course or apprenticeship), or
  • Individuals within six years of their first academic or professional appointment.

These timeframes exclude any periods of career break. A career break is defined as an extended period during which you have not been actively engaged in scholarly research, teaching, or a GLAM-sector role. This may be due to caring responsibilities, parental leave, health reasons, or other circumstances not listed.

What the grant can support

The grant can be used flexibly to support activities such as:

  • Research assistance
  • Travel and accommodation
  • Mentoring or guidance
  • Caring costs
  • Other costs clearly justified by the project

To register for the briefing session: https://www.sas.ac.uk/digital-humanities-research-hub/events/briefing-session-small-grants-scheme-uk-ireland-digital-humanities-association.

To see the full funding announcement: https://digitalhumanities-uk-ie.org/2026/05/01/2026-small-grants-scheme/.

DARIAH-Campus Open Education Resource Showcase [May 26 @2pm, DARIAH Annual Event, Rome]

DARIAH-Campus Open Education Resource Showcase

The DARIAH-EU Community Engagement Working Group and the DARIAH-Campus Editorial Board invite participants to join us during the DARIAH Annual event in Rome for a DARIAH-Campus Open Education Resource Showcase. 

This event will take place on Tuesday 26th May from 2-3.30pm in the Aula Bisconti in the main conference venue.

Please register your intention to attend by completing this form by Friday 22nd May.

This event is targeted at early career researchers, practitioners and those who are currently engaged in training provision as educators (e.g. lecturers, academics, trainers) as well as postgraduate students and lifelong learners. 

The session will showcase DARIAH-Campus resources through demonstrations from leading educators, using examples from their own teaching practices. Following the demonstrations a moderated discussion will afford the DARIAH-Campus team the opportunity to gain a deeper insight from the community in how they engage with Open Education Resources (OERs) such as those available on DARIAH-Campus.  Potential topics of discussion will include:

What formats work best?  

How are training materials identified?  

What sources are trusted for recommendations in OERs?

Participants in the workshop will leave with a deeper understanding of using DARIAH-Campus as a resource for teaching, training and learning and will also have played an active role in informing and shaping the direction of DARIAH-Campus and the development of training materials in current and future projects (e.g. ATRIUM, ARTEMIS, ECHOES).

Gamifying Digital Preservation: An Introductory Twine Workshop [May 12 @10am, online]

Gamifying Digital Preservation: An Introductory Twine Workshop

May 12, 10:00-12:00 UTC+1

The Digital Repository of Ireland is hosting a webinar on May 12th that may be of interest if you’re planning on attending their DPASSH (Digital Preservation in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) conference in late June! 

This 2 hour online workshop led by Francesca Mackenzie (National Archives UK), Lotte Wijsman and Susanne van den Eijkel (National Archives NL) is designed to guide participants in creating text‑based adventure games using Twine, a free and accessible tool for building interactive stories. Prompts, templates, and example structures will be provided to help participants shape their projects and develop their skills. Alongside technical learning, the workshop encourages a playful approach to thinking about digital preservation challenges, offering a creative space to re‑imagine familiar workflows and concepts.

Register:

https://dri.ie/events/gamifying-digital-preservation-an-introductory-twine-workshop

Galaxy – Digital Research Methods Training [Free, online, register by May 16]

Galaxy – Digital Research Methods Training online

We would like to draw your attention to the Galaxy Training Academy 2026, a free, international training programme focused on open, reproducible digital research methods, with particular relevance for arts, humanities, and cultural heritage research.

This training is relevant if you:

• work with textual, audiovisual, or cultural heritage data;

• are interested in practical approaches to digital humanities, text analysis, or machine learning;

• would like access to shared, non‑commercial computational infrastructure for research and teaching experiments;

• are interested in FAIR research practices for the digital arts and humanities.

About the Galaxy Training Academy 2026

The Academy is organised by the Galaxy Training Network, a long‑running international community that develops and delivers training for the Galaxy open‑source research infrastructure, which is widely used and supported across the global research community.

Dates: 18–22 May 2026 (Registration deadline: 16 May)

Format: Fully asynchronous (no live sessions)

Cost: Free

More details: https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/events/2026-05-18-galaxy-academy.html

The Academy is open to researchers at all career stages, including postgraduate students, doctoral researchers and early‑career academics. 

Participants work through a structured set of video‑based and text‑based tutorials at their own pace. No prior experience with Galaxy is required, although more experienced users are also welcome.

Topics

Recommended tracks for community members include: Digital Humanities; From Zero to Hero with Python Machine Learning.

Indicative topics in the Digital Humanities track include:

• Introduction to Digital Humanities workflows in Galaxy

• Researching cultural data using OpenRefine

• Text mining Chinese newspaper archives

• Automated transcription of audio and video materials

Middle voice in the diachrony of Ancient Greek: a quantitative (and qualitative!) approach [May 11 @ 5pmBST, online]

Middle voice in the diachrony of Ancient Greek: a quantitative (and qualitative!) approach

The eighth talk of the Data in Historical Linguistics Seminar Series will take place remotely on Monday 11th May 2026 at 5pm BST. Federico Viglino (Guglielmo Marconi University, Italy) will be presenting on “Middle voice in the diachrony of Ancient Greek: a quantitative (and qualitative!) approach”. 

Registration for this talk will close at midnight on Friday 8th May and the link for this can be accessed here: https://forms.gle/ioQ7qbspf9ebc19J7 

Participants will receive a Microsoft Teams link via email on the morning of the talk. 

The abstract for this talk can be found at this page.

The programme and registration links for all talks in the series can be found on our website: 

2026 Programme

This seminar series is run by Andrea Farina (King’s College London) and Dr Mathilde Bru and is aimed at PhD students and early career researchers. The purpose of this seminar series is to bring together researchers working on historical linguistics with a quantitative approach, and to discuss current avenues of research in this topic. We hope that these seminars will nurture international collaboration and establish academic ties among researchers working on similar topics in this field.

Artificial Intelligence and the Next Frontiers of Digital History: From Algorithmic Reading to Autonomous Agents [May 19 @3pm BST, online]

The seminar series organised by the Computational Humanities research group at the Department of Digital Humanities of King’s College London (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/computational-humanities-research-group) will feature another seminar.
– 19 May 2026 3pmBST
– Javier Cha (The University of Hong Kong)
– Title: Artificial Intelligence and the Next Frontiers of Digital History: From Algorithmic Reading to Autonomous Agents
To receive the link to join, please register at https://forms.office.com/e/gZrrpypLzN by 12 May 2026.

See the event’s page (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/artificial-intelligence-and-the-next-frontiers-of-digital-history-from-algorithmic-reading-to-autonomous-agents) for abstract and bio.

DARIAH-IE Announces 2026 Bursary Recipients to Attend DARIAH Annual Event in Rome

Original project artwork by Diaa Lagan bursary recipient

DARIAH-IE Announces 2026 Bursary Recipients to Attend DARIAH Annual Event in Rome

[Image above by Diaa Lagan, Bursary Recipient]

Four Early Career Researchers from Ireland selected to participate in DARIAH Annual event

DARIAH-IE is delighted to announce the four recipients of its 2026 Early Career Researcher Bursary Scheme, which will support emerging Irish scholars to attend the DARIAH Annual Event, taking place in Rome, Italy from 26–29 May 2026. The theme of this year’s event is: Digital Arts and Humanities With and For Society: Building Infrastructures of Engagement.

This bursary initiative reflects DARIAH-IE’s ongoing commitment to fostering the development of Ireland’s digital arts and humanities communities by providing emerging scholars with invaluable opportunities for international networking and professional growth.

The DARIAH Annual Event brings together researchers, technologists, and cultural heritage professionals from across Europe for presentations, poster sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities that enable engagement with the latest developments in digital research methods, tools, and resources for the digitally-enabled arts and humanities.

Building on the success of last year’s programme, which supported four Irish researchers to attend the DARIAH Annual Event in Göttingen, Germany, this year’s bursary scheme will once again enable early career scholars to participate fully in this prestigious event. Following the conference, bursary recipients will be invited to contribute a short media piece — such as a blog post or interview — to be published on dariah.ie.

Meet the 2026 Bursary Recipients

Diaa Lagan

Diaa Lagan is a multidisciplinary artist and PhD candidate in a joint programme between the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University and IADT, funded by the Elevate Programme (co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union through the ERDF Southern, Eastern and Midland Regional Programme 2021–27). His practice engages metaphorical narratives grounded in mythology and history. His doctoral research, Decolonial Counter-Mapping in Extended Reality, examines how immersive technologies — including virtual reality and mixed-media installation — function as practice-based worldbuilding methods that challenge dominant Western epistemologies of representation, spatial knowledge, and narrative.

Ellen Scally

Ellen Scally recently graduated with a PhD from the Department of Film & Screen Media at University College Cork, where she was also a graduate of the MA in Film & Screen Media. Her doctoral research concerned the history of amateur film and cine-culture in Ireland, and her interests span Irish cinema history, amateur film practice, community cinema, and the audio-visual archive. Her PhD was awarded an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship and, in 2025, she was a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany. Ellen is also a co-organiser of Haunted Futures, an annual interdisciplinary conference at University College Cork.

Guang Yang

Guang Yang is an MA student in Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork. His research applies multimodal computational methods to historical botanical works, focusing on the visual and material structures of illustrated knowledge. His poster, “Phyto-Vision: A Reproducible Workflow for the Computational Excavation of Global Botanical Iconography,” has been accepted for presentation at the DARIAH Annual Event 2026. His work examines how botanical images shaped the circulation and organisation of knowledge across global traditions, developing computational workflows using computer vision, vision–language models, and visual analytics to analyse large collections of digitised illustrations.

Vicky Bouche

Vicky Bouche is a PhD candidate in the School of Education at Trinity College Dublin, where her research centres on how Generative AI-supported feedback can enhance student-teacher relationships in multilingual and multicultural classrooms. With a background as a secondary school French and Spanish teacher, she holds a Professional Master of Education and a Master’s in French Language and Literature. Her research engages with Second Language Acquisition, educational technology, and inclusive curriculum design, guided by the conviction that “technology is most powerful when it brings people closer to learning—and to each other.”

About DARIAH-IE

DARIAH-IE is the Irish national node of DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities), a pan-European research infrastructure supporting digital research across the arts and humanities. DARIAH-IE supports Irish researchers to connect with a European network of expertise, tools, and resources. For more information, visit dariah.ie.

About the DARIAH Annual Event 2026

The DARIAH Annual Event is the flagship gathering of the DARIAH community, bringing together researchers, technologists, and cultural heritage professionals from across Europe and beyond. The 2026 event takes place in Rome, Italy, from 26–29 May, under the theme Digital Arts and Humanities With and For Society: Building Infrastructures of Engagement. For more information, visit the DARIAH website.