A new mission for the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences – with broader responsibilities

Right from the start, CDHU has been a Centre at the Faculty of Arts with its organisational placement within the Department of ALM (Archives, Library and Museums). Since 1 January 2026, CDHU has had a different organisational placement, now reporting directly to the Disciplinary Domain Board of Humanities and Social Sciences, with the Department of ALM as its host department.

This broader mission also involves expanded responsibilities. The purpose of this change is to further strengthen the methodological support and the support for research infrastructures that CDHU provides, giving the whole Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences an increased capability to develop digital methodologies and to be awarded external grants.

From the very beginning, CDHU has successfully supported research projects and research infrastructures in the HSS Disciplinary Domain. The technical knowledge and skills of the research engineers working at CDHU are central its activities. These are experts in programming, AI and digital methodology development who can support researchers who lack these skills.

Because CDHU engineers participate in pilot projects and are registered as project participants in applications for research grants, the right knowledge and skills can be matched to the researchers’ needs. This creates synergies that lead to very cogent grant applications. Since its inception, CDHU has played an important capacity-building role in the HSS Disciplinary Domain, which can be clearly seen in research projects that have received external grants in collaborations with CDHU and its research engineers, including two European Research Council project grants.

But the Disciplinary Domain Board also concluded that there was a need to review the Centre’s mission and governance. The HSS Disciplinary Domain is facing major challenges in the years ahead. The growth of digitalised information and data in many subject areas is expected to increase markedly. The development of digital methodologies, for example in machine learning and AI, is in an expansive phase. Despite this development, the research potential offered by these data and methodologies is not being fully exploited by many researchers.

And the strategic importance of building the capacity of the HSS Disciplinary Domain to meet these challenges is great. Even awareness and knowledge about digital or data-driven methods are uneven among researchers, and between departments and faculties. This makes clear the need for support that is both operational and strategic, and that can be adapted to researchers and students who have differing levels of knowledge at all six faculties in the Disciplinary Domain.

The intention is that this new, broader mission will encourage and facilitate more advanced use of research infrastructures in all relevant environments. Both the data and the analysis methods used should be of such high quality that the resulting research and the teaching that uses them can be ground-breaking. This new mission includes working to encourage research collaborations within the HSS Disciplinary Domain, but also with faculties in the other disciplinary domains, with the University Library, and with other higher education institutions.

CDHU will continue to build on its successful model of bringing together experts in digital technologies with the capacity to support researchers and research projects through all their stages, and of providing direct support to individual researchers. The Centre also serves as an interface to similar functions at Uppsala University, such as UPPMAX, the Research Data Support, University IT Services, the University Library and the University’s future data storage solutions.

The board of CDHU is also the infrastructure committee for the Disciplinary Domain and consists of six members, with representation from all faculties in the disciplinary domain. The Centre is financed by the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Vice-Chancellor’s strategic funds, and external grants. Ronnie Pingel, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Statistics, will take up his role as Director of CDHU on 1 April 2026.

With this broader mission, and its new organisational placement, CDHU will be able to continue to develop its role and strengthen knowledge and skills in digital technologies within the University’s research environments. Its clearer organisational placement and expanded responsibilities will also create better opportunities for the Centre to support research as well as our research infrastructures as digital methodologies become increasingly relevant. This is a development that takes advantage of established structures while also providing scope to satisfy new needs.

Erik Lindberg, Dean of the Faculty of Arts