Robert Schuman DTU event

The “Deep Data Science for Digital History” doctoral training unit (D4H-DTU) hold its yearly event at the Robert Schuman House in Luxembourg. It was a fantastic day full of great workshops, excellent food, and a very nice working atmosphere!

Author: Elena Fernandez Fernandez

Elena is a postdoctoral researcher at C²DH and the academic coordinator at the DTU.

The “Deep Data Science for Digital History” doctoral training unit (D4H-DTU) held its yearly event at the Robert Schuman House in Luxembourg. The design of this event followed a bottom-up approach, based on the needs and interests of PhD students as recorded in a qualitative survey done in March 2026.

We started our day having a very nice coffee break at 9.30 where DTU participants had the opportunity to get some fruit and sweet snacks before starting a very intellectually stimulating day.

Afterwards, we had our first official talk for something that we are very excited about: our upcoming DTU edited volume! In 2027 we are planning to write all together a D4H-DTU book with articles written by all our PhD students. This will be our final deliverable of the programme. Andreas Fickers did a fantastic introduction where he explained the four DTU pillars and PhD students self-placed themselves in the different upcoming book sections.

Andreas Fickers explaining our upcoming DTU Book structure and timeline

Students self-placing themselves among the different book sections

Following that, we were very lucky to participate in a workshop organized by our own Ferdaous Affan! Our PhD students were given the opportunity to discuss best ways of integrating computational methods into historical studies (and the other way around) in doctoral dissertation writing. Gerben Zaagsma and Aida Horaniet were in charge of delivering the workshop.

Aida Horaniet explaining best ways of integrating visualizations into dissertation writing

Gerben Zaagsma explaining how to integrate computational methods into doctoral dissertation writing.

Our PhD students had great discussions!

PhDs discussing how to integrate computational methods into history dissertation writing (and the other way around!)

PhD students discussing how to incorporate data visualization into dissertation writing.

Lunch time came and we nourished ourselves with an excellent food that had options for both meat eaters and vegetarians.

And then, in the afternoon, we had 4 fantastic Atteliers. The first two were taught by Machteld Venken (Grant Writing) and Andreas Fickers (how to transform your dissertation into a book). The second ones were taught by Stefan Krebs (Project Management) and Tugce Karatas (Data Management).