Drs Arja Firet is a subject specialist for the Faculty of Humanities. She is responsible for French, Italian, Spanish Literature and Literary Studies (TLC department) and for Gender Studies (Media & Cultural Studies department). She is also liaison for the UUL's Digital Humanities team.

As an academic information specialist, Arja supports (DH) teaching and research, advising and supporting lecturers and researchers on topics such as:

• Acquisition for the (digital) library collection
• Digital Humanities
• Digitisation
• Digital newspaper archives and text corpora
• Data management
• Handwritten text recognition (HTR) and Transkribus
• I-Analyzer
• Information literacy, digital literacy education, DH end term & learning line
• Open Access publishing
• Support for citation analysis and improved publication visibility (ORCID)
• Search for literature or other sources

She works in close collaboration with the Center for Digital Humanities, among other things by programming the CDH Staff Education Program, by giving regular workshops in the Digital Humanties Workspace and by supporting Humanities staff and students at the weekly Digital Humanites Walk-In Hours. She is also member of the national UKB working group Digital Scholarship & Skills and the Digital Scholarship and Digital Cultural Heritage Collections Working Group of LIBER Europe.

Arja studied French Language and Culture, and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam and Lille III. She is finalising her PhD thesis on French Fantaisies, column-like stories that appeared in the nineteenth-century Parisian 'Petite Presse'. She gives occasional courses on modern French literary and cultural studies.