Dear EADH members,

We are very pleased to invite submissions for lightning talk presentations (5-7 minutes) at the half-day workshop “Labs for Labs: a participatory workshop on digital lab practices in the humanities and social sciences” taking place on Monday 10th July from 13:30 to 17:00 at DH2023 in Graz. 


We welcome presentations from individuals or teams that are managing, affiliated with, or making use of, digital labs infrastructures in research and teaching. The workshop will provide the opportunity to share experiences and learn from others on both the intellectual and operational function of labs, aiming to exchange good practices for successful and sustainable digital labs.


The workshop will be facilitated by The Plant (Playground and Laboratory for New Technologies) at Maastricht University, and the King’s Digital Lab at King’s College London.


We welcome proposals of 150-200 words that connect with one or more of the following themes:


  • Future visions and imaginaries

    • What is the future direction and role of digital labs? How will such infrastructures function and how will they be governed? How should lab spaces look in ten years? 

  • Lab lifecycles

  • What are the different resources, processes, and systems required to enable the sustainable establishment, growth, and expansion of labs so as to avoid obsolescence?

  • Good practices in lab management

    • How to best support, enable, and facilitate research?

    • How to motivate and inspire researchers and educators to use such infrastructures?

    • How to create collaborative and inclusive spaces?

    • How to manage expectations and align lab visions with those of the institutions they are embedded in from faculty to College level? 

    • How can collaborations be established and sustained? 

    • What does fair growth look like for such labs?

  • Roles and recognition

    • What is the status quo of labour and roles, developers, software engineers, and Alt-Acs in such labs? How is their work recognised and rewarded? What structures and systems need to be put in place to support such roles while enabling their development and career pathways? 

  • Evaluating successes and failures

    • What counts as success for a digital lab?

    • How can failures be prevented or used to inform future practices and directions? 

    • How can successes and failures be evaluated? 




Submissions can be sent via the online submission form. The deadline for submission is the 8th May 2023 and applicants will be notified of acceptance by the end of May.


Please note that you must be registered for the DH2023 conference to be able to attend the workshop. The Early Bird Registration for the ADHO conference is valid until the 8 of May. There is no additional charge for the workshop.


Any questions can be directed to Aodhán Kelly - a.kelly@maastrichtuniversity.nl.


Looking forward to seeing you in Graz this year!


Best regards,


The Plant - Aodhán Kelly, Costas Papadopoulos, Claartje Rasterhoff, Thom Frissen


King’s Digital Lab - Arianna Ciula, Ginestra Ferraro, Miguel Vieira, Pam Mellen, Geoffroy Noel