2023Q3 Reports: SIGHUM

Summary

SIGHUM brings together researchers interested in computational linguistics applications to all aspects of digital humanities and computational social science, and provides a forum for communication between ACL researchers and other communities and organisations acting in the digital humanities and computational social sciences. The new board, elected in July 2022, has successfully revitalized the SIGHUM and has undertaken the activities listed below with the goal to strengthen the group’s impact and broaden the community.

Membership

In the last year the group has almost doubled in size, reaching 425 members (as of 14 June 2023). We have created a new mailing list via https://groups.google.com/g/sighum which is actively used to disseminate information and stimulate discussions among members. We have also consulted the members via a survey to inform the group’s strategy. The survey collected 81 responses and its results are summarised in a dedicated blog post. A number of members have also volunteered to contribute to specific aspects of the activities of the group and they have formed three working groups, dedicated to group administration, social media, and web presence, respectively.

Meetings

In addition to the monthly board meetings, we invited the whole group to two online meetings on 19 and 20 April timed to accommodate different time zones. These meetings were an opportunity for members to connect and contribute to the implementation of the strategic priorities of the group.

Group workshop and business meeting

The SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature (LaTeCH-CLfL) is an annual workshop series that aims to provide a forum for researchers who are working on aspects of natural language and information technology applications that pertain to data from the humanities, social sciences, cultural heritage, and literature. The LaTeCH workshops were initially motivated by the growing interest in language technology research and applications for the cultural heritage domain. The scope has soon nevertheless broadened to also include the humanities, the social sciences, and the literary studies.

Since the official formation of SIGHUM, the LaTeCH workshop series constitutes the SIGHUM annual workshop and the venue for the SIGHUM annual business meeting.

This year, SIGHUM supported the [ https://sighum.wordpress.com/events/latech-clfl-2023/ 7th Joint SIGHUM LaTeCH-CLfL 2023 Workshop] held at EACL 2023 with 19 papers and 3 papers from EACL 2023 Findings. The workshop was attended by approximately 40 people.

Outreach

• Website ([1]): the website has been updated also providing information on the officers, their contact as well as a privacy policy
• Blog: a blog site has been created to allow SIGHUM members to spread information on papers, events and the like. Top-ranking papers of the LaTeCH-CLfL workshop 2023 are going to be invited to contribute acknowledging their fine work and to increase visibility. It is envisaged to ask SIGHUM members to contribute.
• Social media: we created a SIGHUM account on Twitter (@SighumSocial) and on Mastodon (@SighumSocial@masto.it)

Board

President: Barbara McGillivray, King’s College London and The Alan Turing Institute (elected July 2022) Secretary: Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, Saarland University (elected July 2022) Liaison Representative: Sara Tonelli, Fondazione Bruno Kessler Trento (elected July 2022)