Towards Development of Open and FAIR Digital Humanities Ecosystem in Latvia (DHELI)

Events

01.02.2024.
Episode No.4 of the Digital Humanities podcast

Episode 4 of the "Digital Humanities" podcast "Citizen Science and DH", in which Haralds Matulis talks to Sanita Reinsone, senior researcher at Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia and head of the institute's digital humanities research group.
The fourth episode of "Digital Humanities" is dedicated to citizen science – both its general definition and its characteristics in the Latvian context. The host Haralds Matulis interviews digital humanities researcher Sanita Reinsone about the current citizen science campaign "Balsu talka", together revealing the profiles of collaborators and researchers, as well as the importance of the quality of data collected or interpreted in citizen science. in this episode Sanita and Haralds also touch upon the relationship between digital humanities, open science and citizen science, as well as highlight several other research-initiated citizen science campaigns, where everyone is invited to get involved and find their favourite activity.

31.01.2024.
Apply for a study course "Introduction to Digital Humanities"

Riga Technical University international master's degree programme "Digital Humanities" offers the opportunity to participate in the course "Introduction to Digital Humanities", which will be taught in the spring semester 2024 by lecturers Ahmad Kamal and Patrick Gavin from Linnaeus University (Linnéuniversitetet) in Sweden. This course has been running for several years and the feedback from students has been excellent!
This semester we are offering 10 places for students from other universities or anyone interested. It is also possible to get credit points –  the course is 4 CP or 6 ECTS.
Application deadline 14 February 2024 at 12:00
Online lectures will start on 16 February 2024, in English, for a total of 16 weeks, every Friday from 16.30 to 19.50
If you are interested, please apply by filling in this form: https://ej.uz/Intro-DH-2024

25.01.2024.
ILFA UA senior researcher Sanita Reinsone participates as keynote speaker at humanities conference organised by Daugavpils University

On 25-26 January 2024 Daugavpils University gathered Latvian and foreign researchers in the humanities for an international conference, where as the keynote speaker with lecture "Digital Humanities in Latvia: Recent Developments, Trends, Perspectives" participated Sanita Reinsone, senior researcher at Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia. More about the event: https://lasijumi.du.lv/en 

12.01.2024.
Anta Trumpa and Renāte Siliņa-Piņķe, researchers of the Latvian Language Institute, participate in the seminar "Latvian Articles and Writings in the Baltics in the 16th-19th Centuries – Research Topics and Problems"

On 12 January 2024, the fourteenth international seminar "Latvian Writings and Writings in the Baltics in the 16th-19th Centuries – Research Topics and Problems" was held, which was devoted to the research of writings of the earlier centuries from various aspects. Anta Trumpa and Renāte Siliņa-Piņķe, researchers at LaVI of University of Latvia, also took part in the event with their presentation "New search possibilities in the SENIE corpus: a presentation".
This year, as last year, the seminar was organised by the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Latvia in cooperation with the Latvian Language Institute of the University of Latvia and the National Library of Latvia. Linguists and literary scholars from universities and research institutions in Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden took part in the interdisciplinary seminar. The presentations focused on newly discovered and lesser-known early Latvian manuscripts, the contribution of G. Mancelis and several other personalities to the development of Latvian language and literature, as well as on some issues of the history of the Latvian lexicon. Several papers were also devoted to Latin and Greek texts of the 16th-18th centuries, as well as to the reception of Middle High German texts. Researchers also presented the corpus of ancient Latvian and Lithuanian texts and innovations in their use. More about the event: https://www.hzf.lu.lv/par-mums/lu-mediji/zinas/zina/t/82301/ 

19.12.2023.
Baltic DH Forum Calls for Participation

Digital humanities researchers, practitioners and developers are invited to participate in the Baltic DH Forum scheduled for April 25–26, 2024 in Riga!

🗓️ When? – April 25–26, 2024
📍 Where? – In Riga
🆓 Participation Fee? – Absolutely None
⌛ Deadline? – January 25, 2024
🌐 http://www.digitalhumanities.lv/baltic-dh-forum-2024

Digital humanities have become a solid part of the research landscapes in the Baltic countries. Over the recent decades, this transformation has been evident through the vibrant and enthusiastic DH communities, the emergence of new research groups and centers, and the increasing presence of digital humanities courses and programs in higher education. This marks the right time for the digital humanities communities of the three Baltic States to come together, to look at how and in what directions DH has developed in our countries, to reflect on what is relevant today and to project what lies ahead in the near future.
The Baltic DH Forum spans two days, with the first day hosting sessions by speakers from Baltic DH communities and European infrastructures. The second day focuses on networking, presenting DH projects, digital tools, and educational initiatives, complemented by workshops on collaborative projects and fundraising strategies.
Apply now for participation in the Baltic DH Forum's "Demonstration and Networking Session" on the second day here by submitting a 200–250-word abstract in one of 3 categories – DH resource or tool, a Research Project, or an Educational initiative. Submissions across diverse areas related to digital humanities are encouraged!
Contact information: [email protected]

07.12.2023.
Researchers Valts Ernštreits and Milda Kurpniece from UL Livonian Institute participates in a small languages' symposium in Munich
The 29th LIPP Symposium "Small Languages on the Big Stage" took place in Munich from 7 to 10 December 2023, where the "DHELI" project was also represented by researchers from the Livonian Institute of the University of Latvia, Valts Ernštreits and Milda Kurpniece, with their paper "A balanced vocabulary without a balanced corpus: the Livonian case". More about the event: https://www.symp.gwi.uni-muenchen.de/ 

27.11.2023.
Stuart Dunn's online seminar on methodological pluralism

Riga Technical University announces series of online seminars organized by RTU Faculty of E-Learning Technologies and Humanities in collaboration with King’s College London. 
Seminars will be hosted by Stuart Dunn, Professor of Spatial Humanities, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.
The first seminar took place on 27 November at 14:30 and was dedicated to methodological pluralism: study design and implementation from the social sciences to DH.
How do you design a research project in the Digital Humanities (DH)? This is a far more diffuse and abstract question than one might encounter in more “conventional” branches of the humanities, and certainly more so than would come across in the social sciences, where study design practice is, more or less, a discipline in its own right. In this seminar participants looked at some of these practices, and considered how they can (and can’t) translate to the domain of DH. How can we use the lessons of other domains to bring nuance and greater rationalization to the distinction between qualitative and quantitative data (or indeed knowledge)? Professor used as his starting point an old blog post that he wrote addressing this question, and went further to illustrate some possible answers from the more recent Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities (2020,  co-editor – prof. Dunn).

23.11.2023.

Researchers Sanita Martena and Nicole Nau participate at the conference "The Word: Aspects of Research" organised by the Liepaja University

On 23 and 24 November 2023, the 28th international scientific conference "The Word: Aspects of Research" (Vārds un tā pētīšanas aspekti) was held at the Liepaja University, with the participation of two "DHELI" project researchers – professor Sanita Martena from the Rezekne Academy of Technologies with the paper "Linguistic Landscape in Linguistics and Language Education: household names of Vērēmi parish" and linguist Nicole Nau with the paper "Language diversity as a challenge in lexicography: the Latgalian thesaurus". More information about the event: https://vards.liepu.lv/ 

21.11.2023.
Episode No.3 of the Digital Humanities podcast

The third episode of the "Digital Humanities" podcast "Latgalian language and the digital environment" is out, in which Haralds Matulis talks to Sanita Martena, professor of Applied Linguistics, Rezekne Academy of Technologies. The recording is available on the YouTube channel "Digital Humanities in Latvia".

26–27.09.2023
#DigitalBio2023: Life Narrative and the Digital

At the end of September, senior researcher Sanita Reinsone, along with researcher Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska and research assistant Haralds Matulis from the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, participated in a workshop and conference organized by the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage. The event was dedicated to life narratives in the context of technology, and they presented a prelude titled "Navigating the Methodological Complexities: Building a Diary Text Corpus" and shared their experience in creating the ALF Autobiography Collection.

19–22.09.2023

ILFA senior researchers Sanita Reinsone and Rita Grīnvalde, and the lead developer Uldis Ķirsis, participated in an experience exchange seminar organized by the Ethnological Research Center of the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (Norsk Folkemuseum). The seminar focused on digital engagement tools, the formation of virtual volunteer communities, and collaboration with them.

12.09.2023
Conference "Recent Language Resources and Tools for Digital Humanities"

12 September 2023 Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Latvia, in collaboration with digitalhumanities.lv and DHELI project organised the annual CLARIN-LV conference "Recent Language Resources and Tools for Digital Humanities", where Kaspars Bērziņš (VPC), Maciej Ogrodniczuk (CLARIN ERIC), Edward Gray (DARIAH EU), Inguna Skadiņa (LU MII), Anta Trumpa and Sanda Rapa (LU LaVI), Anda Baklāne (LNB), Antra Kļavinska (RTA), Sanita Reinsone and Sandis Laime (LU LFMI), Valts Ernštreits (LU Liv Institute), Baiba Saulīte and Ilze Auziņa (LU MII) shared their knowledge.
All conference materials are available here.

24.08.2023.
Registration for the conference "Recent Language Resources and Tools for Digital Humanities"

We invite you to participate in the conference "Recent Language Resources and Tools for Digital Humanities", which will take place on 12 September 2023, 13.00-17.00, at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Latvia, 29 Raiņa Boulevard. Conference registration: https://ej.uz/CLARINLV-registracija
More about the conference programme: https://clarin.lv/lv/jaunumi/98-regstracija-konferencei

23.06.2023.
Episode No.2 of the Digital Humanities podcast
The second episode of the "Digital Humanities" podcast "First steps for DH newbies" is out, in which Haralds Matulis talks to Anda Baklane, Head of Digital Research Services at the National Library of Latvia. The recording is available on the YouTube channel "Digital Humanities in Latvia".

20.06.2023.
Applications for the Baltic Summer School of Digital Humanities open until 10 July

From 25 to 28 July, the DHELI project will host the Baltic Summer School of Digital Humanities (BSSDH2023) in Riga. We encourage applications from students and researchers who might be interested in the following topics:
- Data visualisation with Tableau and Gephi;
- Data mining from web humanities research with Scrapy and Beautiful Soup;
- programming basics with Python for humanities researchers.
Full summer school programme: http://www.digitalhumanities.lv/.../lectures-and-workshops/
Registration information (deadline for applications is 10 July, but we will close earlier if all places are filled): http://www.digitalhumanities.lv/bssdh/2023/about/

23.05.2023.
Helsinki Di­gital Hu­man­it­ies Hack­a­thon #DH­H23

From May 23 to June 3, a hackathon on digital humanities was held in Helsinki, which was attended by Haralds Matulis, the coordinator of the DHELI project.
Haralds reports on his experience in Helsinki: "Around 50 people from different countries participated in the hackathon, divided into four research groups. I participated in the 'Interactional Dynamics of Online Discussions' group. The research data came from an 'incel' forum. The aim of the study was to investigate how forum participants communicate, what makes for constructive and non-constructive discussions, what understandings there are of their own group and external groups, what language structures are used to achieve discussion goals. During the study, various methods of digital humanities were tested and applied to internet forum data. Participating in the hackathon gave me the opportunity to test several digital humanities methods in practice and to take part in data processing workflows carried out by research group members - using methods such as sentiment analysis, topic modeling, registry research, corpus linguistics, and working with large data sets."
More information about the hackathon: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/digital-humanities/dhh23-hackathon/dhh23-themes

18.05.2023.
Episode No.1 of the Digital Humanities podcast

The first episode of the Digital Humanities podcast "Speech Corpora" has been released, in which Haralds Matulis talks to Ilze Auziņa, a senior researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Latvia. The recording is available on the YouTube channel "Digital Humanities in Latvia", the Spotify channel "Klausītava" and the National Library of Latvia's SoundCloud digital repository. The first programme is devoted to the study of speech corpora today, the history of text and speech corpora, the specifics of live language research and artificial intelligence training in Latvian. The host Haralds Matulis interviews Ilze Auziņa, a senior researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Latvia, about speech recognition in Latvian, and how philologists and other humanities-trained researchers can enter the field of computational linguistics and language technologies. In the "Digital Humanities" podcast, we talk to interesting DH personalities about the latest DH research in Latvia. The podcast is jointly organised by the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia and the National Library of Latvia.

02.05.2023.
Workshop on the development and use of speech corpora on 18 May

On 18 May 2023 at 14.00, the second seminar in the digitalhumanities.lv seminar series will take place. The seminar will take place both in person - on the 5th floor of the Nationan Library of Latvia at the Archives of Latvian Folklore, and remotely - on the Zoom platform. The programme of the workshop "Creating and using speech corpora":
"The role of speech corpora in the development of language technologies" (Ilze Auziņa, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Latvia);
"Development of a modern Latgalian speech corpus in the context of documenting less used languages" (Antra Kļavinska, Rezekne Academy of Technologies);
"Speech data processing in ELAN" (Ilze Auziņa, Guna Rābante-Buša, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Latvia).
The workshop series is organised in collaboration with the European research infrastructures for language technologies and digital humanities CLARIN-EU and DARIAH-ERIC.

02.05.2023.
Participation in the international seminar "Documentation for Education of Lesser Used Languages"
On May 2, DHELI project participants Antra Kļavinska and Angelika Juško-Štekele participate in the international seminar "Documentation for Education of Lesser Used Languages" in Rezekne, where they present a lecture "Developing Corpus Literacy: A Perspective of Latgalian Language and Culture Studies" on corpora of Latgalian texts.

18.04.2023.
Humanities in the digital age: Securing innovation and empowering democracy

On 26 April at 14.30, the European Parliament's working group on the Future of Science and Technology (STOA), in partnership with DARIAH-EU and CLARIN ERIC, is organising a seminar on "Humanities in the Digital Age: Securing Innovation and Empowering Democracy". From Latvia there will be two participants: Normunds Grūzītis, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Latvia and the panel "Digital Humanities: Navigating New Frontiers in Education and Science" will be moderated by Sanita Reinsone, Senior Research at the ILFA. The seminar will focus on digital humanities, their necessity and development. Programme of the event:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/en/events/details/humanities-in-the-digital-age-securing-i/20230412WKS05201

06.04.2023.
First seminar in the digitalhumanities.lv seminar series

On 12 April 2023, the first seminar in the digitalhumanities.lv seminar series will take place in partnership with ClarinLV and DARIAH-EU. The seminars will feature presentations by both Latvian and international digital humanities researchers and practitioners, presenting their research, tools and resources developed and discussing methodological issues. The seminars will take place both in person - on the 5th floor of the National Library of Latvia at the Archives of Latvian Folklore, and remotely - on the Zoom platform. The project is developed in cooperation with the European research infrastructures CLARIN-EU and DARIAH-ERIC for language technologies and digital humanities.

04.04.2023.
Workshop on digital resources for European regional languages

On 4 April, the DHELI project working group of the Rezekne Academy of Technologies organised an international workshop in Rezekne, with the aim to share experiences on the development of digital resources for regional and less spoken languages (including Latgalian).  The seminar was partly in person and partly remotely attended by colleagues from Estonia, Netherlands and Finland.  Participants presented the digital resources they had created, discussed challenges and opportunities.

02.2023. – 06.2023.
Course "Introduction to Digital Humanities"
For the third year, the RTU ETHZF Master's degree programme "Digital Humanities" offers the opportunity to participate in the course "Introduction to Digital Humanities" from February to June 2023, which will be taught in the spring semester by lecturers from Lineja University in Sweden. There are still several places available for potential students! There will also be an opportunity to gain credit points during the course. The lectures will be held in English over 16 weeks. The work will be intensive, but the knowledge gained will be worth it! To apply, send an e-mail to [email protected]; give a brief description of yourself (research, field of interest, study programme); indicate whether CP will be required.

08.02.29023
Monthly "DH Brunch" seminar at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art at the University of Latvia. The guest speaker for the event was Anda Baklāne,  the Digital Research Development Project Manager at the National Library of Latvia and a PhD candidate at the University of Latvia. During the seminar, the topic of discussion was the BSSDH 2023 Summer School and the latest digital advancements at the National Library of Latvia.

02.02.2023
The first press release of the DHELI project published.
Read it here

19.01.2023
Kick-off meeting of the DHELI project

Although the DHELI project has been ongoing for some time, the first meeting of the Coordination Group took place today. We discussed the recommendations provided by the evaluators of the project's application and developed strategies to implement them into the work plan. We also discussed the organization of the project's work and planned the next steps. Furthermore, the Coordination Group was delighted to have recently obtained an outstanding evaluation of the final report of the previous DH VPP project. This high appraisal serves as a source of encouragement and inspiration as we progress with the current project.

2022.12.15
The DHELI project has officially begun, and it promises to be an exciting and fulfilling journey that will last for three years!  🎉

Information about the project

The project “Towards Development of Open and FAIR Digital Humanities Ecosystem in Latvia” is implemented within the framework of the National Research Programme “Digital Humanities”

Contacts: [email protected]
Project leader: Sanita Reinsone 

Summary

The aim of the project is to advance digital humanities scholarship in Latvia providing a balanced programme in order to (1) support the development of the existing digital resources and tools intended for humanities avoiding uneven development and enhancing their usage in research and education; (2) prevent fragmentation and unnecessary duplication of DH resources and tools by establishing partnerships and productive alliances between institutions that aggregate similar data; (3) ensure wider visibility, support Open Science and follow FAIR principles, as well as facilitate interoperability of digital resources for humanities and their inclusion in international research infrastructures; (4) promote DH research and education in Latvia, including promoting and strengthening of DH research community in Latvia, and (5) provide necessary guidance for developers of digital resources and tools for humanities, policymakers and decisionmakers, researchers, and other target groups on effective support of digital humanities, development and cooperation.




LUMII

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LULAVI

RTA

LNB

RTU