UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities

Given the growth of fields such as critical digital studies, machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence, Digital Humanities represents a transformative and rapidly developing field in both Ireland and the UK. It uses information and communication technologies to preserve artefacts, to make them more accessible to researchers and the public, and to analyse and mine their information in new and previously impossible ways. There are world-leading centres of excellence in the Digital Humanities field in the UK and Ireland, and both countries possess significant strengths which provide a fertile ground for joint innovative projects, based on complementarity and expertise sharing.

In 2020, the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK (AHRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC) agreed to collaborate on a new funding programme, the UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Programme, that aimed to deliver a transformational impact on Digital Humanities research in the UK and Ireland. The programme intended to exploit complementary strengths in the Digital Humanities between world-leading centres of excellence in the UK and Ireland, leading to new partnerships and cross-disciplinary projects, building capacity and enhancing the integration of humanities and technology in Digital Humanities development.

In the UK, the programme is supported by £4million of funding secured by the AHRC through the UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Fund for International Collaboration. The Ireland-based component of projects is supported by the IRC. The programme has supported a range of collaborative activities since 2019, including research networking activity and larger research grants. The programme began with an inaugural two-day workshop in Dublin on 22nd-23rd October 2019. The workshop brought together 60 leading Digital Humanities researchers from the UK and Ireland to build partnerships around the aims of the programme and identify priority thematic areas to be taken forward by the partners. The first joint networking call, the UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Networking Call, was announced shortly after the workshop. In 2021, the AHRC and IRC jointly announced a UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Grant Call.

In March 2024, following the co-organised Digital Humanities conference in Belfast, the IRC and AHRC published a project brochure highlighting the work of the co-funded Digital Humanities projects. Click the link below to download a copy.

AHRC IRC Digital Humanities programme summary

UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Networking Award

This call intended to support the development of networks of researchers, practitioners and wider partners across the UK and Ireland focussed on the development of Digital Humanities research and skills in both countries.

The UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities programme aimed to enhance collaboration, for example by fostering new partnerships with the creative industries sector; enhancing public access to and engagement with cultural heritage; creating new standards in open access; and supporting new learning, educational and professional skills. More specifically, programme aims included closer collaboration between Ireland and the UK leading to transformative step-changes in Digital Humanities scholarship including:

• The continued critical problematisation of digital humanities, its pro-social values and relevance to contemporary digital discussions of democracy, and engaged citizenship in a networked world;
• The integration of innovative technologies and interpretative methodologies such as Big Data and AI systems within the field of the humanities;
• The strengthening of world-class research capacity for interdisciplinary challenge-based research;
• A skills pipeline that produces digital humanists who are able to work across the humanities and technology sectors.

 

Some of the projects developed websites which can be accessed at the links below:

A Digital Framework for the Medieval Gaelic World

Make Film History

UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association

AURA (Archives in the UK/Republic of Ireland and AI)

Hidden Heritages

The full list of projects funded is below:

Irish PI	UK co-PI	Title	Irish HEI	Value of IRC Award
Dr Kylie Jarrett	Professor Caroline Bassett	Intersections: Feminism, Technology and Digital Humanities	Maynooth	€11,950.00
Dr Michelle Doran	Professor Jane Winters	UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Network: a network for research capacity enhancement	TCD	€12,363.52
Professor David Stifter	Professor Gregory Toner	Developing a Digital Framework for the Medieval Gaelic World	Maynooth	€12,400.00
Dr Annalina Caputo	Dr Lise Jaillant	AURA (Archives in the UK/ Republic of Ireland & AI)	DCU	€12,500.00
Professor Christine Casey	Ms Sophie Chessum	3D CRAFT: Digitally recrafting lost interiors in Britain and Ireland	TCD	€12,491.14
Ms Arlene Healy	Professor Lorna Hughes	IIIF for Research (IIIF4R) Network	TCD	€9,835.00
Dr Ciara Chambers	Dr Shane O’Sullivan	Make Film History: Opening Up the Archives to Young Filmmakers	UCC	€12,489.32
Professor Katharina Becker	Professor Andrew Wilson	Communicating Hidden Archaeological Monuments and Heritage Landscapes to Different Audiences through Advanced Digital Technologies	UCC	€12,471.79
Dr Clíona Ó Gallchoir	Professor Rosalind Ballaster	Digital Edgeworth Network	UCC	€12,471.50
Dr Patrick Walsh	Dr Andrew Mackillop	Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records: New Transkribus and Natural Language Processing Approaches	TCD	€10,798.08
Dr Jenny Roche	Dr Ruth Gibson	Experience together: a live visceral sense of dance performance across the internet	University of Limerick	€9,045.00
Dr Sean Leatherbury	Dr Bryan Ward-Perkins	Premodern Digital Cultural Heritage: Networking Open-Access Image Repositories of Ancient and Medieval Content	TCD	€8,037.00

 

 

UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Grants

UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Grants

The Research Grants call is part of the UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities programme. The call is jointly led by the AHRC and the IRC. It builds on the UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Networking Call launched in 2020. The programme will exploit complementary strengths in the Digital Humanities between centres of excellence in the UK and Ireland, leading to new partnerships and cross-disciplinary projects, building capacity and enhancing the integration of humanities and technology in Digital Humanities development.

This Research Grants Call supports large, collaborative UK-Ireland research projects. These joint projects are expected to have a transformational impact in the Digital Humanities through innovative, multidisciplinary research that engages extensively with wider partners.

It is anticipated that enhanced collaboration will achieve a broad range of academic, social and economic impacts, for example by:

• Fostering new partnerships with the creative industries sector;
• Enhancing diverse and inclusive public access to and engagement with cultural heritage;
• Creating new standards in open access; and supporting new learning, educational and professional skills.

 

Projects are grouped under one of four themes:

 

• Digital Humanities, Emerging Technologies and Research Practices
• Digital Humanities and Engagement with Societies
• Digital Humanities and the Creative Industries
• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage

 

Some of the projects websites are accessible at the links below:

Tackling Online Hate in Football

OG(H)AM

Decoding Hidden Heritages

Interactional Variation Online

OS200

Typhoid, Cockles and Terrorism

Please see the below table for the list of UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Grants

Irish PI	UK PI	Irish HEI	Project Title	Award amount
Dr James O’Sullivan	Dr Michael Pidd	UCC	C21 Editions: Editing and Publishing in the Digital Age	€ 269,872.63
Dr Anne O’Keeffe	Dr Dawn Knight	MIC	Interactional variation online: harnessing emerging technologies in the digital humanities to analyse online discourse in different workplace contexts	€ 269,059.00
Dr Gary Sinclair	Dr Mark Doidge	DCU	Tackling Online Hate in Football (TOHIF)	€ 254,972.01
Dr Jeneen Naji	Dr Sharon Webb	MU	Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities	€ 264,469.97
Dr Sarah Arnold	Prof Keith Mark Johnston	MU	The Invisible Women – Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing	€ 128,277.73
Dr Catherine Porter	Prof Keith Lilley	UL	OS200: Digitally Re-Mapping Ireland’s Ordnance Survey Heritage	€ 269,569.29
Dr Tina Kinsella	Prof Hilary Robinson	IADT	Feminist Art Making Histories	€ 269,998.56
Dr Brian Ó Raghallaigh	Dr William Lamb	DCU	Decoding Hidden Heritages in Gaelic Traditional Narrative with Text-Mining and Phylogenetics	€ 265,086.00
Dr Neil Carlin	Dr Seren Griffiths	UCD	Project 14C	€ 118,336.00
Professor David Stifter	Prof Katherine Forsyth	MU	OG(H)AM: Harnessing digital technologies to transform understanding of ogham writing, from the 4th century to the 21st	€ 269,919.13
Dr Claas Kirchhelle	Dr Samantha Vanderslott	UCD	Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism: The turbulent history of Anglo-Irish typhoid control in revolutionary Dublin	€ 240,044.00