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Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW) is Austria’s largest non-university research facility with over 1300 employees looking back on a history of over 170 years.

In 2015, the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH), jointly founded by the Academy and the Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, was established with the declared intention of fostering the digital paradigm in the humanities. In their research, the centre works on text- and language-related questions focusing on non-standard and historical linguistic varieties as well as eLexicography and scholarly digital editions. In numerous projects across a wide range of digitally mediated humanities disciplines, the ACDH-CH works on digital language resources and related standards, semantic technologies, domain-specific virtual research environments and repositories for preservation of valuable digital research data.

Institutions

People

  • Karlheinz Mörth

    Karlheinz Mörth is vice director of the ACDH-CH. Proceeding from a background in Near Eastern studies (with a focus on modern languages and applied linguistics), Karlheinz Mörth has been working at the interface between modern ICT and humanities studies throughout his academic life. He has conducted research in a wide range of text technological fields taking a special interest in eLexicography, text lexicography, methodologies for the build-up and maintenance of digital corpora, annotation research, and corpus-related encoding standards.

    In recent years, he has developed a keen interest in digital infrastructures, digital infrastructure components, and their role in the humanities. He has grown involved in many activities of the European infrastructure consortia CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) and DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructures for the Arts and Humanities) where he has been active in a number of bodies. On the Austrian level, he has been coordinating (on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research) the Austrian CLARIN and DARIAH activities since January 2014. On the European level, he served as co-head of the DARIAH-EU Virtual Competency Centre I (e-Infrastructures) from 2011 until 2014. Until 2016 he was head of the DARIAH-EU National Coordinators Committee. Currently, he is co-head of CLARIN’s Standards Committee, member of the Conseil scientifique d’E-RIHS France and member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of CLARIAH-NL.

  • Matej Ďurčo

    Matej Ďurčo is head of the ACDH-CH’s group Digital Humanities Research & Infrastructure.

    Since 2002, while still studying computer science at the Technical University Vienna, he has been working at the Austrian Academy of Sciences engaging primarily in corpus linguistics and development of text technological applications. Since 2009, he has also participated actively in the Austrian research infrastructures core group and supported the build-up of the pan-European research infrastructures CLARIN and DARIAH, both on the Austrian and European levels. Since 2014, he was one of the key figures in founding and building up the institute.

    From the very beginning, he took care of the institute’s infrastructure agenda, coordinating the development of applications and the provision of services for the numerous projects of the institute and its cooperation partners. Besides building technical infrastructures, his main concern has been the social aspect, sharing knowledge and acting as interpreter between humanities research and the technical world ensuring mutual understanding in order to find optimal solutions for the specific needs of the researchers.As of November 2022, he has also been acting as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the European research infrastructure consortium DARIAH.

  • Vera Maria Charvat

    Vera Maria Charvat has a master’s degree in Musicology from the University of Vienna.

    She has worked as a freelancer for various projects at the Austrian Academy of Sciences – e.g. “Cantus Network”, “Mediaeval Music Manuscripts and Fragments of the Austrian National Library”, et al.

    Since 2019 she is enrolled in the master’s programme “Digital Humanities” at the University of Graz (ZIM-ACDH), where she was also employed as a student assistant.

    Alongside her original interests as a music historian specializing in medieval plainchant manuscripts, she is now focusing on her Digital Humanities studies such as Semantic Web Technologies, Ontology Modelling and Digital Editions among other things. As data analyst at the ACDH-CH she contributes to the Horizon2020 “CLS INFRA” research project and participates in the CLARIAH-AT/DiTAH research infrastructure projects.

  • Elisabeth Königshofer

    Elisabeth Königshofer is a training officer in the DiTAH team (Digitale Transformation der österreichischen Geisteswissenschaften) in the ERICs and Education (E&E) working group. She obtained a teaching degree for English as a Foreign Language and Latin at the University of Vienna and University College Dublin. She also studied Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna. Currently, she is completing an MA in Digital Humanities at King’s College London.

    Before joining the Austrian Academy of Science, Elisabeth worked at the University of Reading (UK) as an OeAD-Lektorin and Teaching Fellow in German at the Department of Languages and Cultures. There she taught various undergraduate modules in German as a Foreign Language and Memory and Identity Studies in Austria. She worked on assessment criteria revisions and established extracurricular outreach activities for students, such as translations for the local Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) and creative projects on Veza Canetti’s short stories.

    Her research interests are feminist political dissent, disability studies, memory studies, identity studies and Anglo-Irish literature.

  • Tanja Wissik

    Tanja Wissik graduated from the University of Graz in translation and interpretation studies. She holds a PhD from the University of Vienna in translation studies with a specialization in the field of terminology and corpus linguistics. She has been working in numerous national and international research projects first as a junior researcher at the Institute for Specialized Communication and Multilingualism of the European Academy Bolzano, and then as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Vienna. She joined the ACDH-CH (then ACDH) in 2015, where she works as a senior scientist at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. There she is leading serveral projects:
    DYLEN, ELEXIS, DYSEN, Training Digital Scholars: Knowledge Exchange between V4 and Austria, DH Course Registry Sustain. Additionally, she initiated the creation oft the ParlAT corpus. Furthermore she is involved in the following projects and initiatives: CLARIN-ERIC, DARIAH-EU, dariahTeach, CLARIAH-AT & DHA and she is active in the Austrian Standards Committee 033 “Terminology and other language resources”.
    She teaches information technologies and terminology management for translators at the University of Graz and DH methods at the University of Vienna.
    Since 2019 she is one of the editors of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative.

    Her research interests include digital language resources and technologies, especially terminological resources and corpora and the encoding of parliamentary data. Further research interrests are terminological research, variational linguistics,workflow research, translation studies, and the teaching of DH technologies and methods.

  • Anna Woldrich

    Anna Woldrich is communication officer at the ACDH-CH.
    Before joining the ACDH-CH, she worked as social editor and campaign manager.
    She graduated at Universität Wien/Universitá degli Studi di Siena in the field of mass media and communication studies, focusing on radio, broadcasting, marketing, communication research and communication theory.

    She joined the ACDH(-CH) in 2018 to oversee the ELEXIS EU project in terms of planning, managing and monitoring on- and offline communication activities.
    Since 2022 she is involved in CLARIAH AT, supporting the consortium in project administration and communication matters. Additionally, she supports both, CLARIAH AT and the ACDH-CH, in event organisation & event management.

    Last but not least, she is co-chairing the DH Course Registry working group, a joint effort by CLARIN ERIC and DARIAH EU.