About Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences

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The Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Uppsala University (CDHU) was initiated 1 January 2021, and expands upon the activities of the Forum for Digital Humanities (2015–2017) and the Research network DH Uppsala (2018–2020). CDHU coordinates the digital transformation of Humanities and Social Sciences across Uppsala University. CDHU’s mission is threefold and cover:

Research initiation and support (including application support and activities, seminars, and larger events)
Skills training and education (workshops, courses and other support from MA level to researchers)
Digital infrastructure to technically support research in the humanities and social sciences

Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences provides a socio-technical infrastructure supporting research and education at the HumSam domain. The research engineers, coordinators, and staff at CDHU work together offering consultation, practical, and technical support for world-class research that integrates digital methods and tools. Our staff can support different stages of the research process—from research design to obtaining data, statistical analysis, applied Artificial Intelligence (AI), data visualisation, and more. The Research Engineers at CDHU have expertise in a variety of technical skills and knowledge sets, such as coding and data science, AI and machine learning, GIS, sustainable research implementation, and natural language processing.

Expertise

Artifical intelligence

The CDHU’s AI Lab draws on the socio-material infrastructure of the Centre, gathering research engineers with expertise in machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, image processing, natural language processing, optical character recognition, and handwritten text recognition.

Database design and information systems

The CDHU helps researchers develop web applications utilising databases such as Postgresql for data storage. We also help with relational database design and implementation, and can assist the implementation of international standards or metamodels e.g. CIDOC during the system development, in order to facilitate information integration and reuse.

Data science and scientific visualisation data

Science combines methods from mathematics, such as statistics and probability, with computer science and data analysis to uncover insights hidden in research datasets and to use that knowledge to generate predictive models.

Geographic information systems

A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to geographic positioning on the Earth. GIS may further layer disparate kinds of data on a mapping interface, e.g., environmental or social data.

Webscraping and text analysis

CDHU research engineers can help researchers gather data from the internet. We have hands-on experience scraping digital media from social media, the National Library of Sweden website, and databases such as Gale and archive.org.

Funding

CDHU is supported by yearly financing (2021–2026) from the domain of Humanities and Social Sciences and faculty of History and Philosophy at Uppsala University, as well as the Vice-Chancellor’s strategic funding.

CDHU is also part of a Swedish national infrastructure financed by HumInfra, a member of the National consortium for Digital Humanities in Sweden that is financed by the Swedish Research Council.

CDHU’s research and pedagogical operations are further financed by a number of research funders, notably The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society (WASP-HS) the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation, and Riksbankens jubileumsfond.

Collaborations

CDHU works to establish collaborations with units and stakeholders at Uppsala University and beyond. We are part of the expanding national Digital Humanities landscape, and involved in several networks of research institutions both national and internationally. Read more about our collaborations.