The humanities increasingly rely on digital technologies and are thereby undergoing a change in their methodology even to their theoretical fundaments. There are hardly any areas of study without ongoing research projects that strongly depend on digital resources, use digital analysis methods or plan digital publications.
Within these eHumanities there have recently been significant activities in the development of so-called Virtual Research Environments (VREs). In the first place, VREs can be seen as repositories for digital resources but, in addition, there are ambitions to integrate the already existing research tools developed in the eHumanities (e.g. for text analysis, data mining, etc.) to provide the scholars with a platform for collaborative research.
The Center for Advanced Studies Morphomata (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and the recently founded Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH) are organising the workshop: ‘Modelling Virtual Research Environments for the Humanities’. The workshop is an opportunity for the exchange of experiences amongst institutes of the eHumanities, which are currently operating VREs or, like Morphomata with its ‘Digital Agora’, are planning to implement one. Special focus will be placed on the technological foundations of VREs, like repository systems.