Presentation

Matti La Mela, fellow at the Paris IAS for ten months (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Chair) and associate professor of digital humanities at Uppsala University, will speak at the workshop "Infrastructures to Reassemble Data Scattered across Domains, Borders and Media" at the DHNB2026 conference: Lost in Abundance: Encounters with the Non-Canonical, which takes place from March 9 to 13, 2026, in Denmark.

This workshop, open to registered conference participants, aims to create a space where research stories intertwine with the narratives of cultural heritage organisations (CHOs) that hold cultural heritage data. Participants will share experiences, solutions, and identify needs related to infrastructural support to DH research. The workshop seeks to identify ways to improve the findability, interoperability and use of data scattered across borders, domains and media, or rare data, separated from the materials needed to interpret them.

Data in the humanities is “a digital, selectively constructed, machine-actionable abstraction representing some aspects of a given object of humanistic inquiry” (Schöch, 2013). Researchers combine heterogeneous data, from various sources. This practice is essential to develop a comprehensive view that is relevant in terms of their research questions and topics. In turn, researchers often enhance CH data by refining, classifying, and adding context, but there are few mechanisms for returning this back in circulation. Even when shared, research data often remains disconnected from original collections. The presenters in this workshop introduce a handful of research projects and practice in cultural heritage organisations that make visible the infrastructures (or the lack thereof) to access and reassemble scattered data. They will be the base for a final discussion with the aim to build a mutual vision and effective data life cycles in DH.

Presentation of the DHNB conferences

DHNB conferences focus on research, education and communication in the interdisciplinary field of digital humanities in the Nordic and Baltic regions and beyond. The conference has a history of bringing together academics, researchers, students, and professionals with an interest in applying digital methods to research relevant to humanities, social sciences and arts. DHNB invites contributions from all domains of digital humanities.

For the 10th edition in 2026, DHNB2026 theme is ‘Lost in Abundance: Encounters with the Non-Canonical’

For more information: DHNB – Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries