The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud to announce it has signed a Cooperating Partnership agreement with the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship (CRDDS) of the University of Colorado Boulder, in Colorado, USA.
“The University of Colorado is our second American Cooperating Partner, and while I am always happy to welcome new institutions from my homeland, I am particularly pleased with the excellent scholarship and commitment to digital pedagogy and open science that CU Boulder brings to DARIAH,” said Edward Gray, DARIAH’s Officer for National Coordination. “Our priorities align well, and I look forward to what should be a fruitful collaboration that shows the strengths and value of DARIAH beyond Europe.”
DARIAH is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) whose mission is to empower research communities with digital methods to create, connect and share knowledge about culture and society. In addition to having 20 member states and one observer country, DARIAH has also established a network of cooperating partners in non-member countries.
“We are honored to be the second institution outside Europe to join DARIAH as a Cooperating Partner,” said Thea Lindquist, CRDDS executive director, particularly noting “the rich landscape of digital humanities initiatives aligned with DARIAH that are currently underway in Europe.”
Thea Lindquist is currently collaborating with researchers at the University of Helsinki who are associated with DARIAH-FI and has had the opportunity to see successful European collaborations in action through her involvement in DARIAH’s Bibliodata Working Group.
Research Strengths of CRDDS
CRDDS is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder that offers collaboration throughout the research lifecycle. It specializes in research data expertise and infrastructure, open research publishing, and education and training for work and critical engagement with data.
The center is a partnership between the University Libraries and Research Computing at CU Boulder. The fully integrated nature of the work between these two units is a model that has generated interest in both the academic library and research computing community in the U.S.
Training and education in the digital humanities is one of the center’s main focuses. Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Initiative Director for Digital Scholarship in CRDDS, guides the center’s digital humanities efforts and has been actively involved in efforts related to minimal computing, archival justice, and open scholarship. The center offers talks and symposia while it also administers CU Boulder’s interdisciplinary Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate.
CRDDS is working closely with interdisciplinary groups of faculty on grant-funded efforts to expand data education into the undergraduate curriculum at CU Boulder and beyond. Under the aegis of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Connections grant, center faculty are working with the ASSETT Inclusive Data Science Team on Integrating Humanities and Data Science Education, a project to develop a data humanities undergraduate minor. Additionally, they are collaborating with an inter-institutional group of faculty on Data Advocacy for All, an open, modular data advocacy curriculum based on minimal computing principles.
The humanities-aligned projects with which CRDDS staff are involved highlight its commitment to fostering critical data literacy, including the Index of Digital Humanities Conferences, the Feminist Labs Project, and Digital El Diario, an archival justice and historical recovery project built by creators in the graduate certificate’s core course, Introduction to Digital Humanities.
CRDDS is committed to Open Science, one of DARIAH’s priorities, and related issues of research data curation. Center staff are involved in a variety of initiatives supporting open and reproducible research across the disciplinary spectrum, which are especially relevant in light of the US federal government’s 2022 policy guidance on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research. They are currently a partner on a multi-institutional research project on Extending Data Curation in Interdisciplinary and Highly Collaborative Research, funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Integration with DARIAH
The designation as a DARIAH Cooperating Partner will help CRDDS establish partnerships beyond North America, where it is already involved in an impressive array of local, regional, and national initiatives related to digital humanities and (open) research data curation.
CRDDS plans to draw on its established strengths in digital humanities education to contribute to and expand into new areas of critical data work in collaboration with the DARIAH community. Eichmann-Kalwara notes, “as part of our knowledge exchanges, we’re excited to contribute open educational resources — such as tutorials, syllabi, and lesson plans — that are relevant to DH training and education.” These include course materials taking a transdisciplinary approach to critically engaging with humanities data.
Lindquist hopes that “joining DARIAH as a cooperating partner will open exciting new opportunities for international project collaborations and exchange of expertise between CRDDS and European partners that will broaden and enrich the engagement of our faculty and students with the digital humanities.”
“CU Boulder is a world-class institution, and their contributions to DARIAH, both in digital pedagogy and advocacy for open science and data literacy, is a real asset for us,” said Gray. “Americans and Europeans have different perspectives on similar problems, and I can’t wait to see how we can compare notes and collaborate together to advance our research priorities.”
For more information on the Cooperating Partners membership in DARIAH, their role, tasks and benefits, have a look at our detailed post here.
