It is our pleasure to announce that after a successful year as observer in 2025, CEU has officially joined the CLARIAH-AT digital humanities consortium as a temporary member from January 2025. This marks an important milestone for the entire CEU community as it became a part of a longstanding, and ever growing, community which encompasses the vast majority of universities, research institutions, as well as libraries and museums in Austria that engage in the usage of the digital in a humanistic context.
CLARIAH-AT refers to the joint representation of two premier European research infrastructure consortiums or ERICs in Austria, CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) and DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities). As central hubs of promoting scholarly engagement with technology in the humanities and social sciences, both of these organizations aim to promote and support research and teaching with digital methods and foster collaboration, networking, and intellectual exchange on a European level and beyond. Becoming a member of this community is a significant moment for CEU and an important step forward towards becoming a more integral part of the Austrian and international digital humanities scene. Membership in the CLARIAH-AT consortium will increase CEU’s visibility in a broader context and will provide numerous opportunities for faculty and students alike to join existing and novel digitally enhanced projects, win funding for research and software licenses, and apply for travel bursaries to attend relevant conferences.
CEU has already contributed to and benefitted from the CLARIAH-AT community as observer in multiple ways. CEU won two grants in last year’s highly competitive funding scheme: Alíz Horváth (Assistant Professor in East Asian History and Digital Humanities) received a grant to support the organization of the highly successful international event, OCR/HTR Workshop for Under-resourced and Under-represented Languages in Digital Humanities, which took place at CEU on October 3-4, 2025. In addition, Mark Wittek (Assistant Professor in Network and Data Science) won a grant to set the foundation of a novel research project to map the network of jazz musicians. Furthermore, CEU welcomed DH practitioners from all around Austria for the first DH Fest on December 4, 2025. The event included the CLARIAH-AT Roadshow, the largest and most important annual event of the consortium, with a lively project showcase from partner institutions and a special CEU medley session, followed by an innovative project incubation and consultation workshop for members of the Cluster of Excellence EurAsian Transformations, which also helped bring the two communities closer together.
It is our hope that this enthusiastic start will result in further fruitful projects in the future and will continue to strengthen CEU’s role in the global DH scene.
Text by Alíz Horváth