We are pleased to introduce the newly appointed researchers-in-residence, who will start their research in the KB in 2024.
Dr. Lucas van der Deijl (University of Groningen) is an assistant professor in early modern Dutch literature, and will start his project mid-February. During his research, Lucas’ aim is to compile a standardised corpus of all theatre editions printed between 1500 and 1700 currently available in the DBNL. The corpus will be standardised to meet the prescriptions of the multilingual theatre database of the Drama Corpora Project (DraCor). This is especially useful, because theatre dating between 1500 and 1700 has a highly international character. It is therefore interesting to investigate how theatres from different countries have influenced each other. Consequently, Lucas states that connecting the editions from the DBNL with DraCor is “an important step towards a history of Dutch theatre beyond the borders of our language area”. Furthermore, the dataset of Dutch theatre editions will become available to researchers for further research.
The second researcher-in-residence project will be carried out by Dr. Vicky Breemen and Dr. Kelly Breemen, and will start in August 2024. Vicky Breemen is assistant professor at Utrecht University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Law and the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice. Kelly Breemen is assistant professor at the Centre for Intellectual Property Law of Utrecht University’s Molengraaff Institute for Private Law, specialising in research at the intersection of art, culture, law and technology. During their project at the KB, Vicky and Kelly will investigate the notion of bias in collections of cultural heritage institutions. First, they will try to concretise the concept of bias, answering questions like “What is bias and where can we find it?”. Second, Vicky and Kelly will use this information to investigate the possibility of developing a bias impact assessment scale. Such a scale could be valuable, as it would create awareness about various manifestations of bias in the light of digital reuse of the collections. The project will not only be useful for digital humanities researchers who use collections of the KB, but it will also be an important contribution to the general discussion around the use of AI in the cultural sector.
The researchers-in-residence will present their results later on in blogs on KB Lab (among other things).
The Researcher-in-Residence Programme
Since 2014, the KB invites early career and promising scholars to spend six months at the Research department of the KB, using a call for proposals. Scientists will work on their own research using data from the KB. These can be digital born collections, but also large digitisation projects, for instance digitized historical newspapers. Researchers can also use tools or datasets found on KB lab (some of which are produced by previous researchers-in-residence). Together with KB employees, they try to answer their research questions, using computational techniques. The results, in most cases blogs, tools or datasets, are made available in the KB Lab to ensure other researchers can use the outcomes as well. More information about the researcher-in-residence programme can be found on the website of the KB.
Review of proposals 2024
The researchers-in-residence are selected following a submitted proposal. Each proposal is reviewed by a commission of senior researchers. This year’s commission consisted of the following members:
- dr. Laura Hollink (CWI)
- dr. Folgert Karsdorp (Meertens-KNAW)
- dr. Claartje Rasterhoff (UM)
- prof. dr. Els Stronks (UU)
- dr. Jetze Touber (DANS-KNAW/CLARIAH)
- dr. Jesper Verhoef (EUR)