AI

The case for Public AI: making it happen with cultural heritage [Europeana Report Published]

The case for Public AI: making it happen with cultural heritage

Developed through iteration and in collaboration with over 400 professionals of the data space and the Europeana Initiative community, the paper presents a shared vision for how the cultural heritage sector can contribute to a more democratic, pluralistic and publicly accountable AI ecosystem in Europe. 

As AI reshapes how knowledge, culture and history are produced, accessed and interpreted, this paper explores how the cultural heritage sector, supported by the data space, can help build Public AI in Europe — AI that serves the public good, not just commercial interests.

The paper sets out a clear and ambitious role for the data space in turning this vision into reality: from leading by example and applying AI in line with Public AI principles across our technology stack, to acting as a rights broker, trusted infrastructure, literacy engine, technical partner and collective voice for the cultural heritage sector.  

Read the paper if you are curious to know:

  • Why is cultural heritage data so valuable for AI training?
  • Beyond data, how can cultural heritage institutions and professionals help shape an alternative AI approach in Europe?
  • What opportunities is the data space exploring to make this happen, and what challenges must we overcome?
  • What is Public AI, why is it gaining traction in policy debates, and how can it address structural imbalances in today’s AI ecosystem? 
  • What is the state of Europe’s AI landscape, and what role can our sector play in it? What partnerships are needed —and under what conditions— for us to play that role effectively?
  • What are the risks of inaction — for Europe, for the future of AI systems, for the open knowledge ecosystem and for our sector?

Read the paper in full

Key Insights

Creative Futures Academy – Microcredential Learner Fee Subsidy [Applications open]

Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy (LFS) at NCAD & IADT

Creative Futures Academy are delighted to be awarded significant Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy (LFS) to support learners attending our future-focused courses in both the National College of Art & Design and the Institute of Art Design + Technology, Dun Laoghaire.

Courses include:

NCAD

IADT

See CFA website for further details:

Up to 80% Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy offered to CFA Learners in 2026

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.

RAIVE Summer School – Self-built technologies and AI datasets [Applications close May 10]

RAIVE Summer School

We are very excited to have launched the open call for the third edition of RAIVE Summer School, taking place between the 31st of August and 6th of September 2026.  

RAIVE is a collaboration between researchers of Sint Lucas School of Arts Antwerpen (KdG) and the Royal Conservatoire Antwerpen (AP). It is a laboratory where young artists from diverse disciplines such as dance, music, visual arts and technology come together to redefine the boundaries of their craft through the lens of interdisciplinary collaboration. Within RAIVE you have the possibility to explore integrating self-built technologies and AI data sets into an artistic creation process. We aim to reflect on what collaboration between humans and technology implies, and how we can approach it in small scale and ethical ways. The summer school is for anyone who considers themselves a young artist/researcher (regardless of age) and is interested in the topic of performative AI and interdisciplinary creation. 

If you want to know more, visit the website of RAIVE. Everything you need to know can be found there. The application deadline has been extended until the 10th of May. 

Europeana Café – AI at the intersection of research and cultural heritage [Mar 25 @ 13:00 CET, online]

Europeana Research Community Café!

Ines Vodopivec, Secretary General of AI4LAM (Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives & Museums)

The Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (AI4LAM) community is an international, participatory organisation committed to advancing the use of artificial intelligence within the cultural heritage sector. It maintains strong collaborative ties with academic institutions – with Stanford and Harvard among its founding members – as well as with cultural heritage organisations such as national libraries and museums.

What’s more, AI4LAM has built a strong collaboration with the Europeana Initiative for the development of AI in the common European data space for cultural heritage, supporting and fostering Europeana Network Association cross‑community work through the Alignment Assembly on ‘Culture for AI’.

AI4LAM stands at the forefront of developing and maintaining cutting‑edge AI tools and services tailored to heritage institutions, enhancing access, management and reuse of digitised and born‑digital content. The community fosters collaboration, innovation and knowledge exchange in the application of AI across institutions worldwide.

In the ENA Research Community Café, we will explore several inspiring use cases of AI in the cultural heritage sector and discover the possibilities that new technologies offer us.

The speaker
Dr Ines Vodopivec, Associate Professor, is deeply committed to advancing digitisation theory and practice within heritage institutions on an international scale. Her notable roles include serving as Deputy Director of the National and University Library of Slovenia, and Vice Dean at Nova University in Ljubljana, being a dedicated member of the UNESCO Memory of the World National Committee, and participating as a member of the IFLA Digital Humanities – Digital Scholarship Committee.
More recently, she assumed the role of Secretary General of AI4LAM, working with the National Library of Norway and Stanford University Library, USA, further solidifying her leadership and influence in the fields of digital heritage and innovative methodologies.
She is also a Management Board Member of the Europeana Network Association and a Steering Group member of the Europeana Research Community.

The FLOW Project: A Modular Workflow for Automatic Text Recognition and Beyond [Feb 18, online @ 15:00 GMT]

The FLOW Project: A Modular Workflow for Automatic Text Recognition and Beyond

Bodleian Bytes

18 February 15:00 to 16:00

Online event. Registration required.

Registration: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/oxford/registration-bodleian-bytes-the-flow-project

Historical research often involves working with highly diverse and complex source materials, ranging from handwritten manuscripts to large, heterogeneous document collections. Machine learning methods are increasingly shaping how historians work with digitised sources, particularly through Automatic Text Recognition (ATR). In this talk, Jonas Widmer and Dana Meyer will introduce The FLOW, a modular, microservice-based framework designed to support machine learning–driven data management and processing in the Digital Humanities.

The talk will outline how The FLOW separates complex ATR workflows such as pre-processing, model training, inference, and evaluation into independent, reusable components that can be combined flexibly and accessed without programming experience. Using state-of-the-art transformer-based models, the project aims to make advanced text recognition workflows more transparent, reproducible, and scalable across diverse historical datasets.

Jonas and Dana will outline a typical FLOW workflow, showing how datasets are managed on the Hugging Face platform and then processed step by step. The focus will be on how such workflows can support everyday research practices when working with large and heterogeneous historical corpora.

Speaker Biographies

Jonas Widmer is a Research Software Engineer specialising in Digital Humanities at the University of Bern. In this role, he assists in planning and developing projects focused on Natural Language Processing. His primary interest lies in Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), where he engages with historical projects and their diverse sources.

Dana Meyer is a Master’s student in Intelligent Interactive Systems at Bielefeld University and works as a research assistant on the project The Flow in the Digital History group at Bielefeld University

Jonas Widmer

Jonas Widmer

Dana Meyer

Dana Meyer

Bodleian Bytes

Bodleian Bytes is a series of online talks hosted by the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the Bodleian Libraries. The series engages with innovative national and international research in digital scholarship. It is a virtual space for discussions surrounding different tools and methodologies whilst also providing inspiration for future digital research.

Event Details and Registration

Registration is required for this free online event. Registration closes at 17.00 on Monday 16 February 2026.

Date and time: Wednesday 18 February, 15:00-16:00 (UK time)

Location: Online via Zoom.

For further information, please email the Centre for Digital Scholarship: cds@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Centre for Digital Scholarship

The Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at the Bodleian Libraries is a space and place for engaging, leading and shaping discussions around digital scholarship practice and research within and beyond the University of Oxford. 

AIRON Event: AI and Research Evaluation [Jan 22, online, 16:00 GMT]

AIRON Event: AI, Research Evaluation, and REF 2029 — What We Need to Understand Now
🗓 22 January 2026 | 🕓 4pm GMT


🔗 Event link: (3) AI, Research Evaluation, and REF 2029: What We Need to Understand Now | LinkedIn

In this session, Mike Thelwall will present recent evidence on how both public models (e.g., ChatGPT) and smaller private models perform when assessing research quality. The discussion draws on REF-evaluated journal articles and also considers where AI may be applied across outputs, impact case studies, environment statements, and pre-publication peer review.

We will also explore a practical, responsible stance: LLMs can be persuasive and still wrong, but when used carefully they may provide supporting insights — for example by averaging multiple outputs and using rankings rather than absolute scores — to support, not replace, expert judgement.

This event is part one of a two-part series. We will continue the conversation in February with a follow-up panel featuring Mike Thelwall, Elizabeth Gadd, and Helen Young.

If you can’t attend live, you can still stay connected:
📩 AIRON newsletter (summary + Q&A): Newsletter sign up page
🔗 AIRON LinkedIn community: (4) AI in Research Operations Network (AIRON) | Groups | LinkedIn

ACDH Lecture: From Punch Cards to Prompt Engineering [Jan 20, online, 16:45 CET]

ACDH Lecture: “From Punch Cards to Prompt Engineering: The MHDBD and the Future of Semantic Annotation with LLMs” with Katharina Zeppezauer-Wachauer & Julia Hintersteiner (both Universität Salzburg)


📅 Tuesday, January 20th, 2026
⏰ 16:45 – 18:15


The invited speakers will present the complete technological redesign of the Mittelhochdeutsche Begriffsdatenbank (hashtag#MHDBDB): After decades of development in relational and RDF-based environments, the project has moved to a TEI-first architecture designed to support LLM-driven research.

The speakers address the key reasons for this shift:
i) the need for structured, AI-readable data;
ii) the practical limits of high-complexity standoff models; and
iii) the excessive resource demands of large-scale RDF infrastructures.

In this context, Large Language Models are reshaping annotation, search, and interpretation. TEI-XML emerges as a sustainable framework for transparent, semantically robust, and interoperable Expert-in-the-Loop workflows, balancing philological rigor with AI scalability.
The talk offers a focused perspective on the evolving technical foundations of text research in the humanities.

More detailed information,

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/acdh/newsevents/event-series/acdh-lecture-121

This lecture is jointly organised in close collaboration with the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH) and the University of Vienna and is part of the University’s Digital Humanities Lecture Circuit (WS 2025).

Generating Futures: Using AI to Imagine Sustainable Places [Nov 11-14, in person, Galway]

Generating Futures: Using AI to Imagine Sustainable Places

Dates: 11th – 14th November, 2025

Location: Studio 3, O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance, University of Galway

Can Generative AI help us imagine a more sustainable world? Generating Futures brings together communities, artists, geographers and climate scientists to co-create visions of a sustainable future using the power of AI. Funded by Research Ireland as part of the Science Week 2025 programme, this series of interactive workshops are facilitated by PhD researchers based at the Centre for Creative Technologies.

Workshops:


Reimagining Nuns Island: A Speculative Design Walk

Collect Your Own Small & Local Dataset

Envisioning Future Placemaking through AI Visualisation Technologies

Brain Computer Interfaces and imagination – When Science and Art Meet

Full details and links to registration are available via: https://universityofgalway.ie/creative-tech/collaboration/science-week-2025/

Reference Extraction at the Intersection of AI Research and the Digital Humanities: Validation, Interoperability and Collaboration [Nov 4, hybrid]

Reference Extraction at the Intersection of AI Research and the Digital Humanities: Validation, Interoperability and Collaboration

This informal meeting is meant mainly to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange between researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of data extraction, artificial intelligence, and the digital humanities. In the workshop, we continue to address the challenge of extracting heterogeneous references from texts, particularly from historical documents and humanities or legal scholarship. This second workshop focuses on three key themes emerging from the 2023 discussions:

  1. Validation: How can we evaluate and benchmark the performance of different reference extraction tools and approaches, particularly with large language models?
  2. Interoperability: How can we ensure that different tools, datasets, and workflows can work together effectively through shared data models and formats?
  3. Collaboration: How can researchers, developers, and institutions work together to advance the field of reference extraction?

The program is available online at: https://mpilhlt.github.io/reference-extraction/workshop-2025/programme/

The event will take place in-person and online. Register at https://plan.events.mpg.de/e/refextract25 

A link for online attendance will be sent to registered participants before the event. Also, even if you cannot attend, but want to be informed about updates, materials being made available, etc. you can notify us about this at the registration link.

Programme

Tuesday 04 November 2025

Onboarding

09:00-09:15 Arrival/Registration

09:15-09:45 Christian Boulanger/Andreas Wagner (mpilhlt): Welcome and Upshot from RefExtract2023, State of the Discussion

09:45-10:00 Coffee Break

Research presentations

10:00-12:30

  1. Hiba Arnaout (TU Darmstadt): In-depth Research Impact Summarization through Fine-Grained Temporal Citation Analysis
  2. Yurui Zhu/Matteo Romanello (Odoma): Benchmarking Large Language Models on Reference Extraction and Parsing in the Social Sciences and Humanities
  3. Sofía Aguilar Valdez (Saarland University): How Scientific Ideas Evolve
  4. Open Discussion and Ad-Hoc Presentation of Research

12:30-13:30 Lunch

Datasets, Infrastructure and Interoperability

13:30-15:30

  1. Angelo Di Iorio/Matteo Guenci/Marta Soricetti*/Silvio Peroni/Lorenzo Paolini*/Ivan Heibi (University of Bologna): Citation Extractor and Classifier: Pipeline and Datasets (*presenting)
  2. Tamara Heck/Christoph Schindler/Verena Weimer/Philipp Mayr/Ahsan Shahid (DIPF/GESIS): Open Citation Data for Educational Research
  3. Christian Boulanger, Andreas Wagner (mpilhlt): Datasets in the Legal Theory Knowledge Graph Project
  4. Interoperability Roundtable: Open Discussion on Data Models and Data Formats

15:30-16:00 Coffee Break

Tools, Workflows and Pipelines

16:00-17:30

  1. Raphael Schlattmann/Malte Vogl (mpigea)/Aleksandra Kaye (TU Berlin/mpigea): LLM-Based Knowledge Graph Extraction Pipeline
  2. Luca Foppiano (ScienciaLAB): Training the Grobid Reference Extraction Models
  3. Christian Boulanger/Andreas Wagner (mpilhlt): Annotation Tools for Machine Learning: PDF-TEI Editor (for LLamore & Grobid), Prodigy, TEI-Publisher

17:30-18:30 Takeaways, Way Forward, Closing