Invitation
We would like to invite you to a half-day workshop “Coordinating the European Research Area: the role of ERICs and national stakeholders – strengthening the Social Sciences and Humanities” on Wednesday, November 27th, 2024, at 13:00-17:00 CET. The workshop will take place on the NWO premises in The Hague (Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië 300, Room 300).
The event is organised in conjunction with the meeting of the DARIAH European Research Infrastructure Consortium (DARIAH ERIC) General Assembly (November 28) and the DARIAH National Coordinators meeting (November 27).
This workshop follows a format which mixes presentations with brainstorming sessions. We are pleased to announce Professor Emanuela Reale as one of the keynote speakers for this workshop. Professor Reale is the former director of the Institute of Research on Economic Sustainable Growth – IRCRES National Research Council – CNR, Italy and current president of the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation EUSPRI. Dr. Richard Zijdeman, a Linked Data pioneer in Digital Humanities, Co-PI of the SSHOC.nl project, and Dutch National Coordinator for DARIAH will give the second keynote.
With this workshop we hope to bring key stakeholders in the Dutch research infrastructure landscape for the Social Sciences and Humanities together with international experts.
Programme
Chair of the day: Kim Ferguson (Research Data Management Specialist DANS-KNAW and Chief Integration Office DARIAH)
13.00 – 14.30
Chair: Jacqueline Mout (OCW)
First Keynote Emanuela Reale: Changing configuration of Research Infrastructures in Europe: the case of Social Science and Humanities
Second Keynote Richard Zijdeman: From Local Archive to European Research Infrastructure Consortium: “More Io please”
14.30 – 15.00
Coffee break
15.00 Panel session with interactive breakout (25min/5min/30min)
National and European Coordination of Research Infrastructures – challenges and opportunities
Introducing statements from Alice Dijkstra (NWO), Martijn Kleppe (NDE) (tbc), Susan Aasman (CLARIAH) and Anja Smit (DANS)
Followed by three breakout groups on the topics:
- Coordination between ERICs (led by Alice Dijkstra)
- Professionalisation of ERICs (led by Francesca Morselli)
- EOSC perspective (led by Kim Ferguson)
16.00 – 16.15
Short break
16.15 – 17.00
Chair: Anja Smit
Reporting back and plenary discussion and possible action points
Reception
Social dinner (on invitation only)
Motivation for the workshop
Concerning the role of ERICs for the coordination of the European Research Area, there seem to be two trends visible, partly orthogonal to each other:
(1) More and more disciplines, specialties, and interdisciplinary networks form their own alliances in the European Research Areas. We thus see more ERICs emerging.
(2) On the other hand, methods are shared across many fields in the SSH – even reaching out to STEM fields – and so coalitions are formed and infrastructures are set up for both Social Sciences and Humanities – to take one example. There is a certain tension between the increase in variety of networks and the merging of networks into super-structures.
There are many good reasons to reflect on this more systematically. Formation of networks comes with costs, so there is a limit of how many networks can actually co-exist. National and European funding might grow, but not to the extent of fostering all emerging ERICs and other cross-disciplinary networks. However, niches are important to be able to exist further as innovation tends to grow in niches first. Therefore, too stringent centralisation and standardisation of governance for the sake of effectiveness may be counterproductive when it comes to fostering innovation.
The Netherlands, with its landscape of varied institutional, platform, and funding instruments, carries a lot of thoughts and tacit knowledge on how to balance between variety and selection. Parts of the social sciences are collaborating within the ODISSEI-project while parts of the humanities are collaborating within CLARIAH. Together, social sciences and humanities are collaborating within SSHOC-NL (video https://edu.nl/xxtb7; https://edu.nl/jt39x). The Thematic Digital Competence Cluster SSH adds to the landscape by bringing the SSH domain together and strengthening their research infrastructures. Internationally, collaborations are also taking place within the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Science Cluster, which encompasses a series of EOSC-projects and dataspaces. This workshop aims to address opportunities and challenges which emerge in this dynamic and rich landscape.
Registration
We would be delighted if you could actively participate in the discussions. If you wish to participate, please fill in the registration form below by November 12th. Places will be limited so please register as soon as possible. For direct questions, do not hesitate to get in touch via dariah-cio@dariah.eu.