We are delighted to share some highlights of our activities from another busy year for the Association, including updates on advocacy, Community Interest Groups, the Association’s governance, and our Annual Event.

As always as we reflect on the activities of the Association, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed their time and expertise, whether by attending or presenting at the Annual Event, joining a Community Interest Group, responding to surveys, or otherwise sharing their thoughts and ideas.

We remain committed to hearing from you about how we can improve. If you have any feedback for us, please let us know by filling in this form. Likewise, if you are interested in contributing to the work of the Association this year, please get in touch at uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk.

Annual Event in Glasgow

The Association held its third annual event this June, hosted by the University of Glasgow and online. The theme of the event was ‘Collaboration Beyond Boundaries’, as we invited participants to reflect critically on collaborative approaches and to share understandings and experiences of this core value of the Association.

The event comprised over 50 presentations, posters, workshops and discussions, including a plenary roundtable on the topic of ‘Failing Together: The Pitfalls of Collaboration (and How to Overcome Them)’. Here, panellists reflected on the ways in which collaborations within DH can go in unexpected directions, and what we can learn from these experiences.

We were delighted to welcome around 150 colleagues from the UK, Ireland and internationally, and would like to thank all those who joined us for their contributions to such a lively and collegial event. We are also grateful to everyone who shared their feedback from the event. An event evaluation and reflections are to follow.

Association Governance

In February, the Association’s Governance Working Group published a proposal for the Association’s governance approach. The proposal recommended a structure for the Association, a model for membership for both individuals and institutions, and a timeline for elections. Following the recommendations of the proposal, and ahead of a first open election for members of a reformulated Executive Committee, the Association ran an open call for new members of the current governing collective. As a result, we are delighted to welcome Vicky Garnett (Trinity College Dublin), Graeme Kemp (University of St Andrews), Valentina Vavassori (British Library) and Sharon Webb (University of Sussex) to the collective. The welcoming of our new members marks a notable expansion of representation from the GLAM sector on the collective, and we look forward to working with Vicky, Graeme, Valentina and Sharon over the next three years.

Three members of the collective – Arianna Ciula, Lorna Hughes and Naomi Wells – stood down at the end of August and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their wisdom, imagination, commitment, collegiality and expertise. We would also like to thank Michael Donnay for his invaluable contribution to the management and development of the Association. Even if you don’t know other people in the collective, you will know Michael from his communications and, if you have come to any of our events, as the person who made them possible and ensured a welcoming environment. Michael has been key to building our community and we wish him even more success as he continues this important work for the Software Sustainability Institute.

Advocacy and Engagement

In January, the Association appointed its first Advocacy and Engagement Fellow, Claire Carroll. Claire has been working to understand what this community would like to see and how to help it grow. She ran a survey on advocacy interests and needs, which received 50 responses from Higher Education and GLAM digital humanists. While the survey was anonymous, Claire coordinated follow-up interviews with participants who agreed to speak further about their goals for the Association. She hosted an advocacy workshop at the Annual Event, which was fruitful even with a small sample size; funders suggested impact reports that could promote interesting research and that they could use to advocate for DH. Claire is currently working on a research report about Sally Bushell’s Litcraft project and collating the survey, workshop, and interview information into a broader recommendation report.

Community Interest Groups

The Association continues to support and work with our Community Interest Groups (CIGs):

• Research Software Engineering in the Arts and Humanities
• Digital Humanities Climate Coalition
• Digital Correspondence: transhistorical perspectives on language, materials and corpora
• Multilingual DH in the UK and Ireland
• Protecting the Investigator in Traumatic Research Areas

In the past year, the CIGs have organised a range of activities, including the publication of a report and recommendations by the Multilingual DH in the UK and Ireland CIG in September 2024 and the undertaking of a survey of the UK-Ireland Research Software Engineering community by the RSE in the Arts and Humanities CIG in October/November. Further updates are included below. In the coming months, the Association will invite feedback from the current CIGs, drawing on their experiences to frame a second call for new and continuing groups.

Multilingual DH in the UK and Ireland

Following on from the CIG’s work listening to and engaging with the multiplicity of voices advocating for Multilingual Digital Humanities research and practices, the Multilingual DH in the UK and Ireland: Summary Report and Future Recommendations was published in September 2024. In line with the report’s recommendation to increase the visibility of work to support the UK and Ireland’s under-resourced languages, the CIG co-organised a roundtable at the Association’s 2025 Annual Event on Digital Humanities and Lower Resourced Languages of the UK and Ireland: Strengthening Collaborations across Languages and Digital Research Communities. This roundtable was organised in conjunction with The CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Digital Resources for the Languages in Ireland and Britain (DR-LIB) as a testament to the strengthened collaborations between our CIG and other groups pursuing similar aims, including the Multilingual DH initiatives in DARIAH and ADHO.

Protecting the Investigator in Traumatic Research Areas

The ‘Protecting the Investigator in Traumatic Research Areas’ (PeTRA) CIG had a productive quarter. Regular meetings have resumed, occurring approximately every two months, and membership of the group has grown following representation of the CIG at two events over the summer:

In June, PeTRA-CIG co-chair Vicky Garnett attended the Institute for Historical Research’s one-day event ‘Difficult Histories’ at the University of Liverpool, and in July co-chair Kristen Schuster presented in a workshop entitled ‘Building Ethical Bridges’ (organised by Vicky Garnett) at the ADHO Digital Humanities conference in Lisbon. Both events offered opportunities for networking and as a result, the group gained new members. Kristen also represented PeTRA-CIG at the DHA UK-IE Annual Event in Glasgow in June. PeTRA-CIG was also represented at the Open University online workshop ‘Sensitive Data’ on Monday 13th October as both Kristen and Vicky presented a ‘work in progress’ short paper.

A workplan has been put in place to review the ethics policies of UK and Irish Universities, to gain a broad understanding of the expectations on (digital) humanities and social science scholars in regards to ethics in their research: what is considered mandatory beyond the legal requirements of GDPR. Deskwork on this is expected to be completed at the end of January 2026, with potential follow up interviews or reflective work on members’ own experiences of training in ethics to be conducted shortly after. From this, the group will begin to draft guidelines for researchers and trainers in (digital) humanities programmes and research for recognising, mitigating for and responding to potential vicarious trauma as a result of working with difficult data.

A workshop has been provisionally planned for September 2026 to ‘test-drive’ these guidelines against scenarios with participants from all career levels in the digital humanities community. Funding is being sought to provide travel bursaries for early career researchers.

New Members

We are delighted that the Association continues to grow, with more than 100 subscribers joining our mailing list in the past year and around 150 colleagues attending our 2025 Annual Event. If you know someone who might be interested in joining the Association, please share this briefing with them.

Mailing List

In March 2025, we piloted a change to our mailing list such that any member of the list can share information directly with the community. We would like to thank our members for engaging with this change and for sharing your updates.

Following the six-month pilot, we propose to maintain this setup going forwards, however, we are keen to receive any further feedback at uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk.

As a reminder, members of our Jiscmail list are very welcome to share messages with subscribers by emailing uk-ie-digitalhumanities@jiscmail.ac.uk. More information about joining the list, and guidelines for using it, may be found here. 

Looking Forward

In the coming year, the Association will carry out recommendations set out by our governance proposal, including implementing a new model for individual and organisational membership, and holding a first open election for members of a reformulated Executive Committee. Our pilot for the new membership model will now begin later than planned, in 2026. In accordance with our roadmap, we will also explore partnerships with other DH organisations outside the UK, in order to address issues that affect DH globally.

We continue to invite your contributions to, and feedback on, the work and development of the Association. You can contact us at uk-ie.digitalhumanities@sas.ac.uk and share your thoughts via our feedback form.

Thank you to all our members for your continued support and engagement. We look forward to further collaboration in the year ahead!