DARIAH is very pleased to welcome two new cooperating partners based in Switzerland. The University of Neuchâtel and the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne are now part of the Swiss dynamic already composed of six universities and academies that have joined DARIAH as cooperating partners. Switzerland belongs to the six DESIR accessing countries and is building a DARIAH-CH consortium with eight partners institutions in order to support its request of full membership candidature, under the lead of the SAHSS.
The University of Neuchatel (UniNE) is an internationally recognized institution, ranked among the 20 best small universities worldwide. The new project of development of the University for the next 10 years focuses on the development of the digitalization with a priority to the following topics: Big Data, Time and Frequency, Security and Cryptography, Literacy 4.0. In the Faculty of Humanities ‒ the largest of the University ‒ this should lead to the development of a unified strategy concerning data management (archiving and sustainability), the creation of postgraduate courses in digital humanities and the promotion of interdisciplinary exchange of digital competence. Matthieu Honegger, Professor in prehistory, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and involved in multiple projects around digital humanities, is already a partner of the European project DESIR and works in collaboration with Claire Clivaz (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Vital-IT) for the promotion of digital humanities in Switzerland.
With more than 300 laboratories and research groups on campus, EPFL is one of Europe’s most innovative and productive technology institutes. EPFL hosts a Digital Humanities Institute composed of five professors and two senior advisors who carry out research in the fields of Digital Humanities, Experimental Museology, Social Media & Computing, Digital & Cognitive Musicology, Literature, and Social Science. More than 48 collaborations with 44 institutes in 15 countries are already ongoing. It has also developed a Master of Science in Digital Humanities, which offers a two-year program of excellence in both the Data Science and Digital Humanities fields and brings graduates to positions of responsibility in cultural institutions and industries.
EPFL collaboration with DARIAH will be centered on 3 axes:
- The Time Machine FET Flagship proposal: DARIAH-EU has officially supported the Time Machine FET Flagship project since the beginning of this initiative. Time Machine ambitions to develop a large-scale digitization and computing infrastructure together with dedicated applications platforms. The goal is to index cultural heritage digital material in space and time. The project received support from 19 State Archives, 7 National Libraries and many prestigious European Museums.
- Develop the Master of Science in Digital Humanities program: EPFL offers to share its experience with developing this Master in the context of DARIAH’s VCC2 on Research and Education, helping to set up other postgraduate courses in the same line in Europe.
- Connecting Digital Humanities researchers in Europe: In the context of the creation of the EPFL-UNIL Digital Humanities Center, EPFL will contribute towards making DARIAH’s initiatives better known to individual researchers and students, encouraging them to participate in DARIAH working groups and to join DARIAH’s pan-European network of researchers.
