SSH RIs in Switzerland

Introduction

In spring 2022, a coordination group consisting of the directors of national research infrastructures (RIs) in the SSH, the national coordinators of international SSH RIs with Swiss participation (CESSDA, CLARIN, DARIAH, ESS, SHARE, GGP) and the representatives of the Swiss Academy for the SSH was created.

Activities

This working group has started a reflexion in order gather the SSH community and to defend its interests with respect to RIs. This is being done through a series of events and a position paper, as follows:

The first event, which took place on Mai 31, 2022, gathered several stakeholders - researchers, representatives of academic and research institutions, the SNSF, SERI and Euresearch. You can find here the slides of the meeting.

The position paper was written in spring 2022 and circulated in the SSH community to collect for support signatures in August 2022. Downlowd it here to read it.

The second event, which took place on 18 January 2023, had the theme "Paving the way for the future". It aimed at learning about concrete infrastructure proposals and exchanging on how we can coordinate within the Swiss SSH community to create synergies between different concrete projects. Concretely, this meeting had three main objectives.

Raise awareness on the importance of research infrastructure in the SSH domain and how prioritisation and funding works (national and ESFRI roadmap process).
Share experiences from other countries and the European level on how collaborations between projects and infrastructures work.
Give a platform to potential new Swiss RIs in the SSH domain in order to reflect on needs of the SSH community and how to create synergies and join forces.

To reach these objectives, we welcomed four invited speakers from abroad, who shared their experience of how collaboration and clustering happened successfully in other countries and at the European level. In addition, the floor was given to several Swiss projects of RIs in the SSH field with the aim to reflect on user needs and possible synergies. The day ended with a Round Table with an open discussion, in which invited guests from the SNSF, the SERI, swissuniversities, the SAGW and all members of the audience will have the opportunity to express themselves. Have a look at the Programme, Franciska de Jong's slides, Matej Ďurčo's slides and Tom Emery's slides.

Contact

For more information about the initiative and how to get involved, please write to Dr. Cristina Grisot, DARIAH-CH National Coordination Officer and CLARIN-CH Scientific Coordinator or Prof. Dr. Georg Lutz, director of FORS - Swiss Center of Expertise in the Social Sciences.