2025 IEEE CH – DARIAH Workshop on Securing Knowledge: Cyber Humanities and the Future of Critical Research Infrastructures

As the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) undergo a profound digital transformation, Research Infrastructures (RIs) have become central to enabling new forms of knowledge production, collaboration, and preservation. Within this evolving landscape, Cyber Humanities offer powerful tools and frameworks to strengthen and expand the role of RIs—paving the way toward infrastructures that not only support research but also meet the standards of Critical Infrastructures in terms of security, resilience, sustainability, and governance.

Currently, the SSH domain does not possess Critical Infrastructures in the strict sense; however, the transition toward this status is both necessary and urgent. The digital assets, tools, and platforms developed within initiatives like DARIAH—the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities—are increasingly essential to societal memory and cultural continuity, and thus must be treated with a new level of strategic importance.

The workshop “Securing Knowledge: Cyber Humanities and the Future of Critical Research Infrastructures”, organized within the IEEE International Conference on Cyber Humanities (IEEE CH), aims to initiate and structure this crucial discussion. By bringing together diverse perspectives from across the DARIAH network and the broader SSH community, the session will explore how Cyber Humanities can drive the conceptual and technological shift from research infrastructures to infrastructures with critical status.