National Humanities Alliance

http://www.nhalliance.org/news/winners-of-the-first-digging-into-data-challenge-a.shtml

Winners of the First "Digging into Data Challenge" are Announced

US, UK, and Canadian research agencies award grants for innovative humanities and social science projects

December 7, 2009 - Eight international research teams were awarded the first Digging into Data Challenge grants for projects that promote innovative humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis. Four research agencies sponsor the international competition: the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the United Kingdom, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the United States, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from Canada. The winning projects are:

Structural Analysis of Large Amounts of Music Information
Digging into the Enlightenment: Mapping the Republic of Letters
Using Zotero and TAPoR on the Old Bailey Proceedings: Data Mining with Criminal Intent
Towards Dynamic Variorum Editions
Digging into Image Data to Answer Authorship Related Questions
Harvesting Speech Datasets for Linguistic Research on the Web
Railroads and the Making of Modern America—Tools for Spatio-Temporal Correlation, Analysis, and Visualization
Mining a Year of Speech

"Trying to manage a deluge of data and turn bits of information into useful knowledge is a problem that affects almost everyone in today's digital age," said NEH Chairman Jim Leach through a press release. "With this international grant program, NEH is hoping to seed projects that will not only benefit researchers in the humanities, but also lead to shared cultural understanding."

The competition winners were announced on December 3 at an event in Ottawa, Ontario, that featured remarks by NEH Chairman Jim Leach and SSHRC President Chad Gaffield. The eight winning teams represent successful applications from 22 scholars and scientists from the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Each team includes researchers from at least two of the participating countries. With their awards, the teams will demonstrate how data mining and data analysis tools currently used in the sciences can improve scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Total project funding by all four agencies is approximately $2 million (US) dollars. NEH’s contribution of $498,737 supports American scholars from five of the teams.

Additional information about the competition and the wining projects can be found at www.diggingintodata.org.

Text of Chairman Leach's address is available here.

Related content: Digital Humanities, Grants, NEH, NSF