Guidelines for working with us

Researcher instructions for working with CDHU

1. Contact form: We recommend that you contact us via email/contact form first so we get a grasp of your needs

2. Consultations You may also initiate contact by booking an initial consultation meeting: Fill out the contact form and write ‘consultation’ in ‘other’, followed by some details regarding your query; meetings are available: Tuesdays 10-12.00 (Location: Engelska Parken Room 4-0027)

If you do not have external financing but require research support:

Apply for Pilot Project Support. Read more here.

Planning and budgeting for externally financed projects

In most cases, externally financed projects in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences need to account for both

(1) technical support in terms of human resources (research engineer time) that can provide support with methods, tools, data processing and implementation; and

(2) computational resources in the digital research infrastructure for storing and processing data.

CDHU staff will also support and facilitate the prototype design of the project. In order to get CDHU support and a grasp of pricing for resources such as computational space and research engineer support as you plan your application you need to contact us first in good time.

Assessing costs for technical development support:

The usual procedure is that the Centre’s research engineers’ time is lent out from CDHU/ALM. In other words, projects need to account for this financially when budgeting and applying for external funding. Again, make contact with the CDHU first and well ahead of time when planning your budget and assessing costs.

Some particulars when you plan regarding time and working with our research engineers:

• Discuss with your research engineer of choice. Ways to initiate contact described above such as Contact form. and consultation with relevant staff. The research coordinator and deputy director will assign you the right engineer.
• Let them guide you with respect to percentages based on work requirements. You can hire a research engineer for as long as is required, as long as it does not exceed their current CDHU percentage and is feasible within their prior work obligations (e.g. if they are employed for 50% maximum at CDHU they cannot be hired for more).
• A research engineer is hired in exactly the role of research engineer and not in any other role, e.g. as lecturer or researcher.
• Agreements and agreement forms of inter-department collaboration are made formally with the CDHU director, Anna Foka, with the support of ALM management after the project has been awarded financing.

There are several ways to borrow and finance CDHU research engineers, depending on the length of time that the engineer is engaged in the project and other factors:

• If a research engineer’s participation in a specific project is less than 2 months, the overhead accounted for should be that of the department of ALM (currently 25%). The costs are invoiced by ALM (opt. 1).
• If a research engineer’s participation in a specific project is more than 2 months, the overhead accounted for should be that of the project’s hosting department. The costs for the engineer are then carried by the hosting department (opt. 2).
• As an alternative to opt. 2 above: The project transfers funds to ALM (opt. 3) for salary costs incl. OH (currently 25% at ALM). ALM sets up a project which is connected to the main project at the hosting department.