E-Infrastructures for Research Collaboration: The Case of the Social Sciences and Humanities

Collaborative research practices are a highly interesting domain for CSCW. So far, CSCW has mainly focused on computation- and/or data-intensive research endeavors. Here, resources are typically pooled via common e-infrastructures for data access and processing, a set-up requiring additional layers of coordination. Such a focus largely foregrounds the sciences and other fields that rely on highly structured (or structure-able) data and the routinized processes of analysis. In contrast, in this one-day workshop we discuss the conditions and challenges characteristic of research collaboration in the qualitative social sciences and humanities (SSH). In particular, we examine the sociotechnical infrastructures that enable and support research practices that-in comparison with the collaborative paradigm of the natural sciences-tend to be less structured, compartmentalized, and routinized, but more fluid, flexible, and open-ended. The workshop seeks to collect empirical insights and design experiences, preparing the grounds for a comprehensive understanding of the role of e-infrastructures for collaborative research practices in SSH.