2024 Steven Krauwer Award for CLARIN Achievements: Mikko Tolonen, Eetu Mäkelä, Jukka Suomela and Jouni Tuominen
Organisers of the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon
Mikko Tolonen is professor in computational history at the University of Helsinki, Eetu Mäkelä is associate professor in human sciences and computing interaction at the University of Helsinki, Jukka Suomela is professor in computer science at Aalto University, and Jouni Tuominen is a researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Helsinki.
Reasons for Nomination
The Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon (DHH24) was nominated for its ability to bridge the gap between computer science, data science, social science, and the humanities. DHH provides an unique opportunity for researchers and students from various disciplines to come together and apply their abstract knowledge to solve complex real-life problems. As such, the DHH is testament to the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration, fostering innovation through the formulation of research questions, as well as the development and application of suitable methods and tools relevant for particular databases.
Expertise and Contribution
Over the span of ten days, the participants of this year's edition, DHH24, worked from start to finish on interdisciplinary research projects tackling the following themes:
- Measuring the Success in the Eurovision Song Contest in the last 20 Years of Songs
- Enlightening Illustrations: Analysing the Role of Images in Enlightenment-Era Luxury Books
- Echoes of the Chambers: Studying Democracy through Parliamentary Speeches
- Cultures of Online Civil Discourse.
As a result, participants experienced an entire research lifecycle, from ideation and analysis, to the presentation of results. This activity contributed not just to skill-building, but also served as a demonstration of the effective collaboration of multiple and diverse academic disciplines.
2024 Steven Krauwer Award for CLARIN Achievements: Jan Odijk
Jan Odijk is full professor emeritus of language and speech technology at the Utrecht University, and director of CLARIAH, The Netherlands.
Reasons for Nomination
For decades, Jan Odijk’s work has been bridging theoretical linguistics, computational methods, and language technology, while also effectively combining academic research with practical applications. Furthemore, his involvement and leadership in numerous projects, such as CLARIN-NL, CLARIAH-SEED, and CLARIAH+ have been instrumental in setting up a research infrastructure and community for linguistics at a national and Dutch/Flemish level.
Expertise and Contribution
As an expert in the field of language technology, Jan Odijk has been active at both an international and national level, specifically through his work as a board member of ELRA, as the Dutch CLARIN national coordinator, and as a member of SAMBA. Additionally, he chaired the programme committee of the CLARIN 2014 Annual Conference, and organised the 2019 CLARIN ParlaFormat Workshop. As part of his participation in the EU project META-NET, Jan published a crucial publication for the early stages of CLARIN-NL, The Dutch Language in the Digital Age/Het Nederlands in het Digitale Tijdperk (META-NET White Paper Series). More recently, he has also joined as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of CLARIN .
The Award Ceremony
The award ceremony took place during the 2024 CLARIN Annual Conference, a hybrid event held in Barcelona from 15 to 17 of October.
The Steven Krauwer Award for CLARIN Achievements, named after CLARIN ERIC’s first Executive Director, was initiated in 2017 and is awarded annually. Since 2021, multiple awards can be awarded to exceptional scientists or engineers in recognition of outstanding contributions towards CLARIN goals in the areas of language resource building, tools or services.