CASCADE

27 May 202518 June 2025

CASCADE ESR Ke Shu reflects on her experience at DHH 25

Lidia Pivovarova (left) Ke Shu (middle) and Yu Wu (right) at the DHH 25 at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

I am a member of Computational History (COMHIS) research group at the University of Helsinki—and one of CASCADE’s early researchers. Last week, COMHIS successfully organised the Digital Humanity Hackathon 2025 (DHH 25) in Helsinki. Over 10 intense days, 36 participants from across disciplines came together to explore how digital methods can shed new light on humanities questions. As this milestone year marked a decade of DHH, the energy and enthusiasm were especially high.

Four Interdisciplinary Tracks

This year’s hackathon featured four thematic tracks, each tackling a different facet of digital humanities:

ParliaNets: Parliaments beyond Borders
Investigating how debates in one country draw on foreign influences, participants mapped networks of parliamentary speeches and foreign-policy discussions.
Oral History: Digital Presence in Physical Absence
Teams worked with Holocaust survivor testimonies, exploring how digital tools can preserve and analyze stories when the speakers themselves are no longer present.
Rare Earth: Rare Earth & Web Discourses
Focusing on parallel mining approaches, this track combined environmental history with online discourse analysis to trace how “rare earth” minerals enter public conversation.
Early Modern: Economic Bubbles, Consumerism, and the Colonies
This group uses Burney and Nichols newspaper collections to track consumer trends and indicators of economic change in emerging colonial markets.

I had the honour of serving as Team Leader for the Early Modern track—my first time in this role. I was responsible for distributing our datasets and providing all the technical support our team needed.

22 May 202522 May 2025

New CASCADE Substack!

The CASCADE project has launched a Substack: ‘Language and Technology’!

This Substack offers a window into the research and reflections of CASCADE’s doctoral projects across the five partner universities: University College Cork, University of Helsinki, KU Leuven, Universität des Saarlandes, and the University of Sheffield.

Posts include insights into computational linguistics and text analytics; perspectives on the social, ethical, and cultural implications of AI and natural language processing; commentary on the role of language in the data economy; and interviews, explainers, and research highlights for both scholarly and general audiences.

The first post, written by CASCADE Early Stage Researcher Sofía Aguilar based at USAAR, is now live at:

https://languagetechnology.substack.com/

Pop on over and hit the subscribe button to learn more about the work of our research team!
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CASCADE is a collaboration between University College Cork, University of Sheffield, University of Helsinki, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and Universität des Saarlandes. Funded by Horizon Europe under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks and the UKRO.

26 March 202527 May 2025

2nd CASCADE Training & Research Camp at USAAR

The CASCADE team including guest researchers Haim Dubossarsky and Tanja Säily at USAAR

The second CASCADE Training and Research Camp took place from 12-13 March at the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken, where the full group of 10 ESRs and their PhD supervisors, and a roster of guest researchers came together to learn from, and with each other, at the USAAR Campus Innovation Center. Two packed days of activities included ESR group work & brainstorming sessions; poster presentations and even a guided tour of 500 years of Saarbrücken history at the SAAR Historical Museum.

The programme included several guest researcher presentations by experts in the field of Historical Sociolinguistics, Computational Lexicography and Natural Language Processing, as well as an insightful presentation by a former Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher on the highs and lows of the ESR journey. All in all, it was a very well spent spent two days in Saarbrücken and the team returned to their respective institutions with heads filled with new information, new ideas and further plans for future collaborations.

5 February 20254 August 2026

On starting a new journey

Photograph of two PhD researchers smiling facing the camera — Penelope Gia Bao Huu Nguyen (left) and fellow CASCADE doctoral student Maria Jimena Flores Alejo. (right)

When everyone at high school was busy choosing majors for their university applications, I was daydreaming about becoming a lexicographer. I loved the idea of working with dictionaries, especially English dictionaries. As the lingua franca and the language of the academic world, it was English that opened so many doors for me, liberated me, and above all, quenched my thirst for knowledge. But mastering a tool is completely different from having it as the subject of your research. I then had grown so fond of the language that I wished to study it. But as a non-native speaker, how could I make it happen? That is not to mention that linguistics and lexicography were not taught as majors at the best university in my region. Time went by, and I forgot about the little crazy dream I had.

I have a bachelor’s degree in English Studies from Can Tho University in Vietnam, a master’s degree in Linguistics from Purdue University in the USA, and now, I am pursuing a PhD in Digital Humanities at the University of Sheffield in the UK. The name of the degree may fail to capture what I really study, but what I can say is that I’m inching towards what I aspire to explore. Last spring, I even interviewed for the position of a linguistic data manager at Cambridge Dictionary. Somehow, I could complete almost all the data challenges. The once baseless dream has now been less baseless.

17 December 202418 December 2024

Rachel McCarthy, a CASCADE doctoral student, shares her experience at the first project training camp at The University of Sheffield.

Monday, November 25th
On a crisp November evening, we arrive at Manchester Airport, joining the hustle of holiday travellers before heading to Sheffield for the first training camp of the CASCADE doctoral network. As an early-stage researcher (ESR), I’m both excited and (more than) a little nervous – but ready to meet the nine other PhD students and supervisors. After a quiet train ride through the supposedly-scenic Peak District (by that time, it was too dark to tell), we finally reach Sheffield. Our home base for the training camp is a stunning four-star hotel in a historic building on Leopold Square. Nestled among chic bars and restaurants, the vibe is quirky yet refined, offering a comfortable setting for both work and relaxation.

CASCADE researchers and their supervisors kick off Day 1 of the project’s first research camp held at the Digital Humanities Institute at University of Sheffield. Photo by Emer Yip.

29 November 202429 November 2024

1st CASCADE Research Camp completed at the University of Sheffield’s Digital Humanities Institute

This week, our team of brilliant Early Stage Researchers met in person for the first time, spending several days exchanging ideas and perspectives with the project research supervisors at the Digital Humanities Institute at the University of Sheffield. This first of four planned research camps, laid the foundations of future collaborations between individual team members, and we are very grateful to our hosts at the DHI for providing the ideal environment in which to kick-start the programme.

20 November 202422 November 2024

CASCADE Early Stage Researchers First Meet up!

We were delighted to introduce the CASCADE team of Early Stage Researchers to each other for the first time in a virtual team meeting on 29th October following a long recruitment process. Our 10 student researchers hail from China, Vietnam, Mexico, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and Colombia, and they are excited to get to work on their PhD research projects in computational linguistics and humanities scholarship.