Trans-Atlantic Platform (T-AP) "Digging into Data" Request for Proposals

The Trans-Atlantic Platform (T-AP) is a collaboration among key humanities and social science funders in Europe and the Americas. The Trans-Atlantic Platform aims to enhance transnational research collaboration and has identified, with the help of the social sciences and humanities research communities, a series of common challenges and strategic priority areas where such collaboration will bring added value.

Scientific research topics

The T-AP Digging into Data Challenge is open to any project that addresses research questions in the humanities and/or social sciences by using techniques of large-scale digital data analysis and show show these new techniques can lead to new theoretical insights. It is specifically aiming to advance multidisciplinary collaborative projects in digital scholarship that seek new perspectives and insights.

Proposals may address any research question in the humanities and/or social sciences, utilising any data source to do so. Examples of research challenges that may be considered in projects include (but are not limited to):

Interpreting data: using data-based analysis, modelling and simulation techniques to gain new insights into how an increasingly connected and digital world is changing the ways in which groups and individuals are interacting, including but not limited to the creation and development of creative, cultural, and societal processes and phenomena, as well as analysis of historical trends and linguistic change.

Novel application of data: using one or more data sources which were not originally designed/generated/collected for research purposes, for example open data/open source systems or ‘live’ data generated in real-time, either alone or in combination to address humanities and/or social science research questions.

Employing multi-form and/or multi-source data in research: exploring the potential for calibration, combination and interoperability of datasets in two or more different formats and/or from two or more different sources in order to address humanities and/or social science research questions.

For examples of projects that have been approved in the past in Digging into Data Challenges, see the Digging in to Data website. Note, however, that in these calls the prospect of answering pertinent social sciences and/or humanities research questions was not yet an evaluation criterion.

Funding principles

Applicants must apply as a transnational research project partnership. Each transnational project is a partnership among a number of national research teams based in any of the participating T-AP Digging into Data countries listed above. Each project must:

• consist of at least three eligible research teams based in at least three of the participating T-AP Digging into Data countries;
• include teams from both sides of the Atlantic, i.e., from Europe and the Americas;
• include teams led by an eligible Principal Investigator; if more than one team from the same country is participating in the same proposal, they must work together and designate one single Principal Investigator; and
• designate one of the Principal Investigators as the project’s main Principal Investigator/coordinator.

The T-AP Digging into Data call will be implemented through a coordinated funding scheme where each Funding Organisation will fund its own national research teams within a transnational T-AP Digging into Data project partnership.

Each international project will have a duration ranging between 24 and 36 months.