The CCeH engages in a wide range of activities, including publications, presentations, organization and participation in events, et cetera. Since 2017, we have compiled our output in the annual CCeHarvest (curated for many years by Nils Geißler) to present the results of the center’s activities in a series of blog posts. These collections are now made available as separate pages here.
Since the earlier Harvests (prior to 2025) focused on publications and presentations, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few other activities. In addition to actively hosting visiting scholars, the center has always been involved in organizing numerous workshops, meetings, and conferences. Much of this can be found in the old blog archive. Here are some highlights:
In March 2016, the CCeH, as coordinator of the European MSCA ITN “Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network” (DiXiT), hosted the DiXiT Convention 2: Academia, Cultural Heritage, Society at the University of Cologne. From March 15–18, 2016, international experts and early-career researchers gathered to discuss the future of digital scholarly editing. Many impressions can still be found on the archived tweet wall, in the conference report, the abstracts (and slides) and – unforgettably! – the club lecture, complete with a reconstruction of a historical sword fight, still available on Youtube.
The CCeH has organized other conferences in collaboration with the “Cologne DH Continuum”, which includes the CCeH, the Institute for Digital Humanities (IDH), and the Data Center for the Humanities (DCH). The standout highlight was the DHd2018: In the spring of 2018, the CCeH, IDH, and DCH hosted the 5th annual conference of the Association for Digital Humanities in the German-Speaking World (DHd) in Cologne under the theme Kritik der digitalen Vernunft (“Critique of Digital Reason”). With more than 700 participants, it was the largest DHd conference to date. In keeping with Cologne’s tradition, there was once again a very special event: the Fight Club at Cologne’s artheater, where scholars had to compete for the audience’s favor. Also particularly memorable were the keynotes by Sibylle Krämer on the ‘Stachel des Digitalen’ (“The Thorn of the Digital”) und C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen on the ‘Kritik der digitalen Vernunft’, still available in video format as well (as is much of the other conference content). The Book of Abstracts can be found onZenodo.
The re-launch of the FORGE – Forschungsdaten in den Geisteswissenschaft, organized by the Cologne DH Continuum, took place online in September 2021 due to the pandemic; however, it was equal in status to other major events and attracted more than 300 virtual participants. This conference is also well documented. Not only was the Book of Abstracts published on Zenodo, but all papers and poster presentations were also made available individually in the Zenodo community of FORGE.
In addition to organizing additional smaller conferences, workshops, project meetings, and lecture tours, the CCeH, as the Digital Humanities Coordination Office of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts, is also responsible for many events within the Academy’s framework: Most recently, at the end of 2025, the annual workshop of the inter-academic working group AG eHumanities took place at the Academy’s premises in Düsseldorf, where participants spent two days exploring various perspectives on data.
Social Life
We should also mention the organization of other events. Legendary: the annual #CCeHike and #CCeXmas. The Christmas party, in particular, has achieved a certain cult status, thanks in no small part to many cat pictures and, more recently, the inspiring opening keynotes catnotes (2024: Elisabeth Mollenhauer, 2025: Alina Ostrowski). There are also performances by our in-house band that add to the atmosphere. Anyone looking to experience this will have to stop by—no documentation available 😉
Picture credit
See the captions for credit information. The photo of the harvest is by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash.
Note: Content from our old website (2010–2021) can still be accessed via a legacy version: https://cceh.uni-koeln.de/legacy/.