Computational methods provide ever more new research opportunities in humanities and social sciences, and digitalization rapidly change ways in which research is done. Digitalization and its applications, e.g., the web with its data, services, and applications, are closely related to the challenges of globalization and are changing the society in fundamental ways. These changes create a growing need for research and education in multidisciplinary Digital Humanities.

To address these challenges, a new centre "Heldig for Digital Humanities" has been established in Finland at the University of Helsinki (UH). Heldig is a research network and infrastructure for solving research problems in humanities and social sciences with novel computational methods, and for studying digitalization as a phenomenon. Heldig also supports education in Digital Humanities and application development. The goal is to form an ecosystem that fosters collaboration between academic research groups, memory organizations, companies, and the general public.

The challenges of digitalization are tackled by re-focusing, joining, and coordinating the intellectual and other resources in humanities, social sciences, and computer science across faculties, universities, and other stakeholders in the Helsinki capital area. Heldig is a major Finnish strategic effort 2016-2020 to take this step to the digital future. As part of the activities, eight new tenure track professor positions in DH related fields will be established at UH in seven different faculties during 2017-2020. In addition, Heldig advances several current strengths and initiatives at the University of Helsinki and beyond in the areas of natural language processing, computer aided linguistics, research on social and psychological aspects of digitalization, smart cities, quantitative social sciences, and digitized cultural heritage.

More information: http://heldig.fi

Eero Hyvönen
eero.hyvonen@helsinki.fi
Director of Heldig
University of Helsinki and Aalto University