Call details
The DISKAH (Digital Skills for Arts and Humanities) network aims to build capacity amongst Arts and Humanities (A&H) researchers, research technical professionals (RTPs), creative technologists, computationally oriented artists, in the use of state-of-the-art national Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) to foster innovation and collaboration.
Launch of DISKAH fellowship call | 16 January 2026 |
Total fund | £58,500 |
Individual fellowship awards | £6,500 |
Information webinars | 21 January 2026, 11:00 (GMT), and 29 January 2026, 13:00 (GMT) |
Application deadline | 20 February 2026, 16:00 (GMT) |
Decision communicated | Mid-March 2026 |
Fellowship programme starts | 1st April 2026 |
INDEX
1 – Who can apply?
The DISKAH Fellowships are open to:
-
Researchers from A&H-related disciplines
-
Research Technical Professionals (RTPs), such as Data Scientists, Research Software Engineers, Systems Administrators, people involved in Technical Support for DRI
-
Creative technologists and computationally oriented artists.
Applicants are expected to:
-
Be affiliated with a Higher Education Institution (HEI) or an Independent Research Organisation (IRO) in the Arts and Humanities in the UK. The affiliated institution or organisation must have agreed to the applicant's participation for the DISKAH programme, including time buy-out.
-
Be resident, eligible to work and able to receive payment within the UK.
-
Lead or enable the delivery of research outputs and impact from research, for example as a Research Technical Professional (RTP), a PhD candidate, an Early Career Researcher (ECR), an established researcher, a creative technologist or a computationally oriented artist.
-
Have prior experience in developing software and using digital research infrastructures to support their proposed workflows for research.
-
Commit to spend 165 hours from April 2026 to March 2027 in the DISKAH Fellowship Programme. This is equivalent to a time allocation of 10% of Full Time Employment (FTE).
We are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and are especially keen to attract a diverse applicant pool, and strongly welcome applications from under-represented groups in research, computing, and digital skills, such as Black, Asian, ethnic, and/or national minorities, women, those with disabilities/disabled people, neurodivergent people, and/or those in the LGBTQIA+ community. Please contact us directly if you would like to discuss any accessibility requirements for your application or application process.
2 – What will the programme involve?
The DISKAH one-year long fellowships provide an opportunity to broaden engagement with the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructures (DRI), including data-services and compute services, to underpin large-scale computational methods to support innovation. DISKAH Fellows will gain access to digital resources and networks to develop their projects, build capacity, co-design training, as well as contributing to the DISKAH network.
A key aspect of the fellowships is the hands-on scaling up of data-intensive workflows using existing software by accessing computing infrastructure and/or creating new workflows to address larger or more complex datasets. Fellows are encouraged to deploy data available in UKRI-funded data services, such as the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, Archaeology Data Service, Literary and Linguistic Data Service, British Library Research repository, Museum Data Service, Heritage Science Data Service. Fellows are not required to demonstrate high proficiency in High-Performance Computing (HPC); but they should have experience in developing software and using digital research infrastructures to support their proposed workflows for research.
Through these efforts, the fellows will develop exemplary use-cases for DRI in A&H and deliver training for wider capacity building within their institutions and communities.
3 – What is the fellowship timeline?
The Fellowships will run between April 2026 and March 2027 and the programme of work is as follows:
Dates | Activity | Location |
|---|---|---|
15-17 April 2026 | 3-day introductory and co-design workshop | Brighton |
May-June 2026 | Access and onboarding to DRI | Remote |
July-August 2026 | 5-day (dates TBC) training workshop on DRI for research | TBC |
July – December 2026 | Independent deployment and testing of research software in DRI | Remote |
January 2027 – March 2027 | Dissemination and training of research community/ies | Face to face at various institutions |
As paid fellowships, DISKAH Fellows are expected to commit up to 165 hours to this programme, including at least 60 hours for independent hands-on experimentation utilising DRI. Fellows will also be expected to co-design the DISKAH curriculum. Training workshops will support Fellows with relevant technical and non-technical skills, including communicating research through academic and non-academic outputs.
5 – What are the expected outcomes of the fellowship?
Fellows are expected to develop an independent piece of work utilising DRI to produce an exemplary use-case for DRI; as well as lead the delivery of one face-to-face training event between January and March 2027 within their network or community/ies. This training will be an opportunity for them to share the knowledge and skills they have developed during the programme. Additionally, they should further disseminate their use-case for DRI in A&H to build capacity in the community via outputs, such as training materials (e.g. Carpentries-style), digital research outputs (e.g. Programming Historian, research paper), blog posts, datasets, or software prototypes. Fellows are expected to make these outputs, including software and datasets, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).
Fellows will be invited to showcase their programme of work at a network DISKAH event towards the end of the project.
6 – How to apply?
To submit an application, use the following form: https://survey.chws.brighton.domains/index.php/833447
Deadline: 20 of February 2026, 16:00 (GMT).
A FAQ is also available to help applicants with any questions they might have. The application's questions can be found in this document.
Your application includes three components:
-
A 2000-word case for support.
-
A letter of support from your home institution or independent research organisation to confirm their support for your involvement in the DISKAH Programme.
-
An updated CV (up to 4 pages long, including indicative publications and/or relevant outputs).
7 – What should the case for support include?
Your 2000 words case for support should be structured around the following areas:
Proposed Project
-
What do you hope to accomplish through this Fellowship programme? For example, what are your research questions and the computationally intensive software workflows that you are trying to scale? Please provide details on existing codes/software, programming languages, available large-scale datasets, platforms and computer architectures DRI/HPC services that you might have been using or intend to use within your project.
-
What approaches do you currently use and why are they important for your research or practice and/or the research or practice you support?
-
How will access to high-performance computing (HPC) systems, resources and training will inform or transform your approaches?
-
What existing datasets do you have access to or have you created/curated? Describe the data types, sizes, licenses/owners and modes of access. If you are using existing datasets, explain whether these are hosted or planned to be hosted in national data DRI services (Distributed System of Scientific Collections, Archaeology Data Service, Literary and Linguistic Data Service, British Library Research repository, Museum Data Service, Heritage Science Data Service).
Impact and Personal Statement
-
Why do you want to become a DISKAH fellow, and how do you think it will benefit you?
-
Which wider networks do you currently have which might benefit from capacity building, such as access to research software and training, through your fellowship?
The applicants are not required to demonstrate high proficiency in High-Performance Computing (HPC); but they should have prior experience in developing software and using digital research infrastructures (e.g. software repositories, command line compilers, virtual environments). The application should clearly identify the candidate’s strengths and readiness to engage with these skills and infrastructures. This will allow us to identify training requirements.
8 – How will we assess your application?
A panel will assess and score applications according to the following criteria:
-
Proposed Project:
-
Quality of the proposed work including underlying concepts, existing research software and datasets.
-
Pertinence of the approaches to benefit from the capabilities of DRI, including datasets as well as large scale computing infrastructure.
-
Potential for the proposed project to develop one exemplary use-case for DRI in A&H.
-
-
Impact and Personal statement:
-
Quality of the applicant’s track record for their career stage.
-
Extent to which the wider networks will benefit from capacity building through the fellowship.
-
Readiness to engage with datasets and large-scale workflows.
-
We aim to complete the assessment process within 4 weeks of receiving your application. Feedback will also be provided to applicants.
9 – Information webinars
For those interested in the programme and application process, the dates are as follows:
The webinars won’t be recorded, but we will make the slides available, and we will update the FAQ page after both webinars.
For any enquiries about the webinars, please get in touch with Dr. Myrsini Samaroudi: M.Samaroudi3@brighton.ac.uk.
10 – More information about DISKAH
The DISKAH (DIgital SKills for Arts and Humanities) is a network initiated through a collaboration between the University of Brighton, Durham University, the University of the Arts London, and the University of Exeter, N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research (N8 CIR), King’s Digital Lab, UCL’s Centre for Advanced Research and the European Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH). The network has expanded with fellows from De Monfort University, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Northeastern University London, and The University of Edinburgh. The network will further expand via the new Fellowship scheme by supporting researchers to access and co-develop a UK-wide training program to enhance computational and data literacy as well as engage with cutting-edge Digital Research Infrastructures (DRI).
11 – Project ideas and support
We particularly encourage project ideas which either:
-
Explore data in addition to or beyond text-based sources, such as visual, multidimensional, or multimodal data.
-
Leverage large-scale data, already available or in the process of becoming available through national data DRI, or data that you plan to deposit in national DRI services.
-
Connect or integrate data from multiple data DRI services.
-
Explore creative use of data with potential applications in the creative industries.
If you need to discuss project ideas, please email DISKAH's PI, Dr Karina Rodriguez Echavarria K.Rodriguez@brighton.ac.uk, to book a meeting.
12 - Contacts
If you would like further information about the programme or the project, please contact:
Dr. Karina Rodriguez Echavarria,
Reader and DISKAH Project Lead,
email: K.Rodriguez@brighton.ac.uk
Dr. Myrsini Samaroudi,
DISKAH Research Fellow,
email: M.Samaroudi3@brighton.ac.uk