About
The mission of DARIAH-FI
DARIAH-FI is a national research infrastructure for the needs of data-intensive social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Finland. DARIAH-FI was created to mitigate and scale the scattering of best practices across individual research groups and universities. Our national network lessens overlapping work and encourages synergies inside the Finnish SSH community.
As a research infrastructure, we build and share digital tools, datasets, and functionalities that help researchers bring materials into environments for data-intensive research and big-data processing. Our services are provided centrally through CSC’s environment to make them as easily accessible as possible.
DARIAH-FI aims to become the national consortium affiliated to DARIAH-EU -The pan-European Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities. This provides Finnish universities and research institutes access to key European resources to spread digital competences and support digital humanities and computational social sciences. This affiliation facilitates international collaboration and gives visibility to Finnish resources internationally.
Why do we need DARIAH-FI?
There are at least three good reasons for national co-operation through DARIAH-FI:
EFFICIENCY
Coordination on a national level helps to avoid duplication of work in individual research teams → more efficient use of limited resources in data-intensive SSH research.
SUSTAINABILITY
Individual research teams do not have sufficient resources for long-term infrastructure building → our network builds sustainable solutions for data-intensive SSH research.
FUNDING
We facilitate the spread of digital competences in every Finnish university → increased chances for winning funding at the highest international level in data-intensive SSH research.
Organization
DARIAH-FI has operated since 2022 as a researcher-driven ecosystem of services with representatives from seven universities in Finland, the National Library of Finland, and the CSC. The main decision-making body of DARIAH-FI is the Steering Group. Its members are senior-level experts in the fields of digital humanities, computational social sciences, history, cultural studies, and related fields such as information science and data science, reflecting DARIAH-FI’s interdisciplinary commitment.
The director of DARIAH-FI is Mikko Tolonen, with Eetu Mäkelä acting as the technical lead for the infrastructure. Day-to-day operations are coordinated by a team from the University of Helsinki and the National Library of Finland (info@dariah.fi) in close collaboration with the local offices.
