CDHU Receives High Praise and Funding Recommendation

In January 2021, the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (CDHU) was instated at Uppsala university for a first five-year period. During 2024 CDHU has been evaluated by two external reviewers, Elaine Treharne (Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities at Stanford University) and Simon Lindgren (Professor of Sociology at Umeå University and Director of DIGSUM Umeå university). At CDHU we are very happy to inform that our reviewers, in their written report, are highlighting the great success of CDHU, while stressing the great importance that Uppsala University keeps building on these achievements by extending funding and preserving the current operations beyond 2025.

The reviewers state that they "enthusiastically" recommend "full funding for the Centre for the requested period up to 2029", given "the vibrancy, focus, and overall excellence of [CDHU], testified to by its staff’s many important contributions to Uppsala’s securing of major competitive grants, scholarly output, teaching, workshops, and research publications". Within "just three years", they note, "the CDHU has gained a national and international reputation for excellence in interdisciplinary research and scholarship in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and digital and computational methods." They also note that, within Sweden "and more widely, the CDHU contributes to National and International Infrastructures, such as DARIAH, InfraVis and HumInfra—and is called into these major programs for knowledge exchange and academic networking."

To complete their report the reviewers had access to review materials consisting of a self-study, provided by us, as well as general information on the organisation. They also visited us in Uppsala for "meetings with the staff, research engineers, students, and faculty of the CDHU". Based on this the following important points are also stressed:

- That the success of the current leadership and the organisational structure of the CDHU is "a model of its kind" that needs to be preserved. In relation to this it is important that the managerial team of CDHU is fully resourced going forward, given the "tremendous demands" that "are likely to increase".

- That the reviewers were "deeply impressed with the involvement of all employees in the Centre" pointing out that "the administrators and research engineers play a crucial collaborative role in the smooth-running and efficient operation of the Centre."

- They observed that "the CDHU has become a major hub on campus for scholarly exchange both institutionally and nationally. Several spectacular funding awards have been made [to Uppsala University] that could not have been gained without CDHU input and assistance."

At CDHU we are of course tremendously happy and proud after reviewers’ great positive feedback and acknowledgements. Now we are waiting for the university leadership to prioritise and fully implement the suggestions put forth by the reviewers!