The ESF Research Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities (NeDiMAH), in conjunction with the Europeana Cloud (eCloud) project wishes to invite applications to attend a one-day workshop investigating potential uses for APIs in Humanities and Social Science research.

The workshop will take place on Wednesday 17th December in The Hague, Netherlands.

Who is this workshop for?

We are looking for participants that might fall into two categories:

• Humanists and Social Scientists who have no or very little previous experience of using APIs to obtain big data-sets, but are keen to learn of the potentials (approx 10 spaces); and,
• Developers who work with Humanities and Social Science themed data-sets (approx 2 spaces).

Aims of the workshop

We aim to determine the current state of the art of API use, the barriers, practices and justifications, and develop a workflow that non-technical as well as technically competent humanists can follow in order to obtain big data sets using web services and APIs. In doing so, it will bring together researchers from the Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) who have not (knowingly) used APIs in their research before, but are keen to learn new digital methods, and software developers who make use of AHSS data. Participants will hear of the potential uses of APIs in AHSS research, and will take part in a practical session to design an experiment using APIs and web-services.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to envisage the uses of APIs in their research, and perhaps design their own studies using APIs from Cultural Heritage Institutions.

The outcomes of this workshop will also help the Europeana Cloud project in its continuing developments of and improvements to the Europeana Portal.

Funding

Travel costs and reasonable accommodation costs can be reimbursed by NeDiMAH for a small number of accepted applicants from countries who are currently in the NeDiMAH network. You can see a list of those countries here (please note, while listed, Germany is no longer a contributing country to NeDiMAH).

If you wish to be considered for this, please make this clear in your application.

How to apply

Spaces for this workshop are very limited. For this reason, we might not be able to accommodate all applicants to this workshop. In order for us to assess your suitability, please email vicky.garnett@tcd.ie with a one-page (A4) document outlining the following:

• Your current research
• Your current research institution
• Your contact details
• Your experience of digital methods to date
• What you hope to gain from the workshop

To comply with ESF funding regulations, preference will be given to applicants from countries who are currently in the NeDiMAH network.

Applications must be received no later than 5pm (GMT) on Friday, 7th November, 2014.