CLS INFRA – Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure

The ACDH-CH has joined forces with 13 other institutions across Europe for a research project that aims to aid new computational approaches to the study of Europe’s multilingual and interconnected literary heritage: Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure (CLS INFRA, No. 101004984) is an “Integrating Activities for Starting Communities (IASC)”-project, launched in March 2021 and funded by Horizon Europe 2020 (Call: H2020-INFRAIA-2020-1) for the duration of 48 months.

At present, the landscape of literary data is diverse and fragmented. Even though many resources are currently available in digital libraries, a lack of standardization hinders their access and reuse. CLS INFRA aims to build a shared and sustainable infrastructure with high-quality data, tools and knowledge needed for the study of literature in the digital age, using artificial intelligence and other computational methods.

The resulting improvements will benefit researchers by bridging gaps between greater and lesser-resourced communities in computational literary studies and beyond, ultimately offering opportunities to create new research and insight into our shared and varied European cultural heritage. The deep integration of both the CLARIN and DARIAH ERICs ensure the project’s long-term stability and sustainability.

The ACDH-CH is leading the work package (WP) 6 “Consolidating and preparing data for CLS” and is particularly involved in WP 5 “Issues of data curation and selection” and WP 4 “Training and Skills for CLS”. Additionally, the ACDH-CH is also contributing to task 3.3 “Showcases for the application of CLS methods and tools”, and task 8.3 "TEI compatible text annotation workflows”. One kind of activity in the project is “Transnational Access”, which will allow researchers, especially from lesser-resourced communities, to apply for stays at the individual partner institutions, where they will be able to use the infrastructure and resources, connect and interact with local experts, while working on smaller research projects.

Project Partners:

• Institute of Polish Language at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland (coordinator)
• University of Potsdam, Germany
• Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW), Austria
• National University of Distance Education (UNED), Spain
• École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France
• Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
• Charles University, Czech Republic
• Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, France
• Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, Ghent University, Belgium
• Belgrade Centre for Digital Humanities, Serbia
• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Netherlands
• Trier Center for Digital Humanities, Trier University, Germany
• Moore Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland