The ARDC team enjoyed connecting with many in the HASS research community at our Symposium in November, Digital Humanities Australasia, and the Canadian Australian Partnership for Open Scholarship (CAPOS).
2025 has been a year of growth and collaboration for the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons. Together, we’ve advanced national research infrastructure that makes research easier, faster and more connected. Here are some highlights:
I’d also like to congratulate the researchers involved in the new ARDC Centre of Excellence for Transforming Human Origins Research. We are excited to be a partner in the new centre. Learn more in this article from the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
We wish you a safe and happy holiday season, and look forward to providing more valuable research infrastructure for HASS in 2026.
Read on below for the latest news, resources and upcoming events.
Kind regards,
Jenny Fewster
Director, HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons
ARDC
The Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA) has opened expressions of interest for its Graduate Digital Research Fellowship.
Now in its fourth year, this fully online, 12–15 week program supports postgraduate students across Australia to build practical digital research skills—whether enhancing their current thesis or developing an independent digital project. Fellows work closely with mentors and take part in workshops, seminars and collaborative activities. They may explore methods such as computational text and image analysis, social media analytics, spatio-temporal mapping, Indigenous perspectives on digital research and domain-specific tool development.
Learn more about the program by reading about the 2024 and 2023 fellowship cohorts.
Don’t miss out— submit an EOI by 13 February 2026 to be considered.
We’re improving the ARDC website and are seeking researchers to help us make it more useful for Australia’s research community.
What’s involved?
Who can participate?
Researchers from all disciplines, at HDR, ECR and MCR level, from metropolitan and regional areas. Whether you use ARDC services or have never used them before, we want to hear from you. Submit your EOI >
Dr Sam Hames from the Language Data Commons of Australia shares a practical tip on how to critically assess language collections to ensure they’re fit for your research purpose.
This blog from Prof Monika Bednarek, a CI with the ARDC-supported Language Data Commons of Australia, unpacks the legal challenges of using copyrighted language data in research, especially with generative AI. It helps you better understand how copyright law intersects with data access and reuse, helping you navigate compliance while maximising the value of your datasets.
Part of the Language Data Commons of Australia, this project compiled a list of valuable oral history collections in Victoria. The project had enormous buy-in: between May and September 2025, it received close to 200 submissions reporting on over 9000 interviews. Read the report and search at database about the collections. You can also join the project launch on 16 Dec – register now.
The fourth annual ARDC HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons Summer School will be held in-person at Federation University Ballarat Campus from 3 to 4 Feb 2026.
The Summer School aims to empower participants with practical knowledge, build digital skills, and help inspire new research outcomes within the humanities, arts, social sciences, and Indigenous fields of study. Participants will collaborate in an interactive group setting while networking with like-minded researchers and subject matter experts.
Location: The Summer School is being held at Federation University in Ballarat, a 90-min train or car journey from the Melbourne CBD.
Who should attend? Researchers in humanities, arts, social sciences and Indigenous domains, especially higher degree researchers (HDRs) and early to mid-career researchers (EMCRs).
The Summer School is free to attend, and travel bursaries are available.
Find out what to expect at the 2026 Summer School – watch the overview webinar recording.
Please share: We would be grateful if you could share this opportunity to attend the 2026 Summer School with your colleagues. Our goal is to increase registrations for the event, and your support would be invaluable.
To help you share this opportunity, we’ve prepared a pack of promotional text and images. If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].
23 – 25 Jun
ResBaz Perth 2026
23 – 25 Jun
ResBaz QLD 2026
Can’t see what you’re looking for, or want to ask something else? Please contact us, we’re keen to hear from you.
Read a selection of recent HASS-related journal papers acknowledging ARDC services and ARDC-supported platforms and data assets. When you acknowledge the ARDC, you support our ongoing sustainability.
Schweinberger & Haugh. Reproducibility and transparency in interpretive corpus pragmatics. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics.
Bednarek & Taboada. Attitude in Reported and Non-reported News: A Critique of Sentiment Analysis in Corpus Pragmatics. Corpus Pragmatics.
Research Data Scientist
Employer: University of Queensland
Location: Brisbane
Applications Close: 5 January 2026
This update was sent to all those who registered their interest in the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons. To register for updates, please complete the form below.
