Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon starts today at the University of Helsinki. This 10-day event brings together students and researchers in the humanities, social sciences and computer science to collaborate in a DH project from start to end. A public presentation of the projects will take place on 29 May 2026.
This year, the 5 groups will focus on newspapers, parliamentary data, companies and legislation, bibliographical data and oral poetry. This year the Hackathon kicks off with 47 participants, of which 27 from outside Finland. This international Hackathon would not be possible without generous sponsorship by CLARIN-EU, HIIT, the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History, and Marie Curie Training Networks CASCADE & MECANO.
As a student and participant this year, the Hackathon provides an opportunity to experience a complete research project in vivo. Therefore, it is a great stepping stone for those who plan a career in academia. Nevertheless, the hackathon is also an exercise in interdisciplinary (and international) collaboration, teamwork, and building a pipeline from a question to tangible results. And those skills are applicable universally. I am personally the most excited about meeting fellow participants, learning from them and establishing new connections. Finally, it has long been on my bucket list to design a real-deal research poster, and here I will be able to try my hand at it.
As for the audience, the broad range of topics invites all kinds of viewers. Most teams are working with textual data, so all students and researchers who work with text could get some methodological insights. For computer scientists, the presentations demonstrate how they can use their expertise to support humanities research. And of course, the thematic basis of hackathon projects could interest all SSH folks, with or without a computational background. For instance, one of the topics, “Crimes and Punishments”, explores the coverage of crime in newspapers and court proceedings in 18-19th-century Britain, which could engage historians, social scientists, representatives of the media and the general public. Groups will have a communication plan to report about progress, so stay tuned for #DHH26 on Instagram or blogs.
As colophon, we kindly invite researchers, general public, media and fellow students to attend the public presentations and discuss the projects with participants on Friday, 29 May 2026 at 13:00–16:00:
13:00–13:10: What is #DHH26 Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon?
13:10–14:30: Presentations of Hackathon work by the groups
14:30–16:00: Wine and poster session
The presentations take place at the Minerva Plaza, Siltavuorenpenger 5 A, K2 floor (map: https://goo.gl/maps/yE3Fz5Y4rPM2). The event is free, but please register in advance to let us know that you are coming by using this form: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/140504/lomake.html
The event will be streamed at https://video.helsinki.fi/unitube/live-stream.html?room=l5
#DHH26 is is organised by FIN-CLARIAH — particularly its DARIAH-FI component — in collaboration with HELDIG and the Department of Digital Humanities at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Helsinki, as well as Aalto University.
Read all about #DHH26: http://heldig.fi/dhh26
Text: Iuliia Nesterenko Photo: Mikko Tolonen