The workshop about DARIAH infrastructure took place at UNED past October 30th.. .The event was organized by the H2020 DESIR-DARIAH Project at Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (LINHD-UNED), and supported by POSTDATA project. The Association of Hispanic Humanities (HDH), the Academic Research Group of Information Sciences and Digital Humanities from Cuba (HDCICuba) participated as collaborators as well.
The workshop aimed three goals.
- Introduce DARIAH European infrastructure for Digital Humanities.
- Present Spanish digital infrastructures at the international level
- Discuss cooperation strategies between the Ministry and the various research groups related to Digital Humanities in Spain.
Actually, Spain is not a DARIAH partner, but participates in it through the DESIR project leading by the UNED. UNED is the only Spanish partner in this international network project. The aim of DESIR is to promote DARIAH infrastructure and to endorse the total integration of Spain in DARIAH. Wishing it, UNED started to jointly work with the Ministry, research groups and professional networks of the Digital Humanities in order to coordinate the existing projects and define a joint strategy.
The event had 30 face-to-face attendants and 103 online attendants.
The Program
The workshop program was divided into two sessions. Morning presentations were dedicated to present the international infrastructures DARIAH and CLARIN, as well as several Spanish infrastructures such as the Incipit, CSIC as well as professional infrastructures such as the Association of Hispanic Digital Humanities (HDH) and the Xarxa d’Humanitats Digitals (XDH) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
The welcome words were offered by the Magnificent Rector of the UNED, Ricardo Mairal Usón and PhD. D. Salvador Ros Muñoz, Principal Investigator of the DESIR project. PhD. Sr. Toma Tasovac, Director of the Belgrade Center for Digital Humanities and Director of DARIAH and Mrs. Inmaculada Figueroa, Deputy Vice-Director General for Internationalization of Science and Innovation of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities; Phd. Sr. Koendraad De Smedt, National Coordinator of CLARIN Norway and PhD. Sr. Oriol Vicente Campos, Cooodinator of Xarxa d’Humanitats Digitals at UAB. attended as guests.
The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, in the words of Inmaculada Figueroa, Deputy Vice-Director General for Internationalization of Science and Innovation, is open to the participation of Spain in DARIAH. She presented the point of view of the Ministry of the General Vice Directorate for the Internationalization of Science and Innovation as the responsible unit for Spanish participation in major international infrastructures. Also, she spoke about the importance of infrastructures for Europe. The Minister considered infrastructures as fundamental tools to be able to make outstanding science, also considered that infrastructures are elements of competitiveness for the innovation that is generated around them.
Figueroa explained the situation of Spain in relation to the infrastructures created so far and highlighted the clear weakness of the country in the area of social sciences. She believed that this was somewhat related to the nature and idiosyncrasy of the infrastructures and the social science community. He indicated that the ministry works driven by the interest of researchers and communities, and that is why it is necessary to create a strong community to move forward and promote this participation, then the ministry can analyze and evaluate the proposal.
In the case of DARIAH, it was mentioned that the ministry made a very strong job between 2014 and 2015 and that there was a discontinuity, but he highlighted the work done by the UNED and the Digital Humanities Association at that time, where 40 groups were summoned from different institutions interested in participating in DARIAH.
The process that started was stopped at the time but that is not dead and that a leadership is needed from the community of researchers and institutional support to carry it forward. It is necessary to establish a strong node at the national level to be able to participate in a strong way in the European infrastructure. Figueroa mention that we must therefore advance in this process of participation and in the financial aspect define a financing scheme among all together with the ministry and see what real possibilities exist and work together.
The ministry is open to continue with this process and encouraged continuing with this and to return to work together with the ministry. Figueroa pointed out that since the beginning of the process it was considered that Spain had to be in DARIAH because of its nature and its resources. DARIAH also wants Spain inside.
In the afternoon, the attendants met in plenary, leading by Salvador Ros (DESIR), Nuria Rodríguez Ortega (HDH) and Vicente Oriol (XHD), to discuss the Spanish participation in DARIAH. The auditorium was made up of professors and researchers from several universities in the country and they agreed to draw up a joint work strategy, with the pushing hands of the HDH; to increase the number of interested parties and to organize activities towards DARIAH.es.
Link to the presentations ( ).