Sciences and Humanities join forces in Centre for Digital Humanities

The Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities join forces in the Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) at Utrecht University. Investigating the implications of AI and datafication for our digital society requires concerted interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary efforts. The CDH aims to effectively respond to this urgent need, and to connect better with various societal partners to different research disciplines at the cross-sections of Humanities and Sciences. 

As part of this collaboration, the Utrecht Data School (UDS) has become part of the CDH under the joint deanship of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities. Over the past years, UDS developed collaborative projects with societal partners and researchers from different disciplines, as well as formats for teaching professionals and learning opportunities for students. With UDS positioned at the cross-sections of Humanities and Sciences they can better connect various societal partners to different research disciplines.

Joint projects

The closer collaboration between the sciences and humanities is already unfolding: Recently two teams consisting of members from both faculties have been won grants of the first AI Labs call. One project, develops in cooperation with regulations authorities NVWA and Agentschap Telecom an audit for algorithmic systems. The project inquires how the development context and the use context determine outcomes which might be in violation of rules, or negatively affecting societally shared values.

Another project explores value-driven recommendations in cooperation with DPG Media. Revisiting indicators currently used for personalization of news media, the project aims to develop additional indicators that allow to make a wider range of values (e.g. media pluralism, diversity, neutrality, etc.) explicit and optimize the personalisation accordingly.