CLARIAH Fellowship Call 2026

With this call for fellowships, CLARIAH-NL invites scholars to apply for opportunities to conduct original and innovative interdisciplinary research projects in the arts and humanities, based on digital collections, datasets, and tools made available by CLARIAH.

The CLARIAH-NL entity warrants the continuity of knowledge, infrastructure, workflows, organization, working relationships, and network consolidated in CLARIAH projects. CLARIAH-NL consists of a wide variety of tools, services, and datasets. For an overview of CLARIAH-NL resources, please visit CLARIAH.nl or the Ineo platform. Ineo lets you search, browse, find, and select digital resources for humanities and social science research.

In order to further improve the CLARIAH infrastructure and enable its use, CLARIAH-NL opens this Fellowship Call 2026, in order to encourage cross-, inter-, and intradisciplinary research. Two kinds of fellowships are distinguished: Research Fellowships and Teaching Fellowships.

Research Fellowship

In a Research Fellowship, a researcher (the CLARIAH-NL Research Fellow) carries out a focused research project based on an explicitly formulated research question. The research must use data, tools and/or services that are already part of the CLARIAH-NL infrastructure. The Research Fellowship results in:

1. a research article manuscript about this research submitted for publication,
2. a public presentation at a conference, or a workshop for peers,
3. a list of requirements (a.o. user needs, wishlist, bugs),
4. a web text (e.g., a blog post, a data story, a tutorial) for the Ineo portal that explains the method and approach lucidly to a specific user group.

Teaching Fellowship

In a Teaching Fellowship, a lecturer at a Dutch university (the CLARIAH-NL Teaching Fellow) uses data, tools, and/or services that are part of the CLARIAH-NL infrastructure in a Bachelor, Master, or Research Master course for an explicitly identified category of students (e.g., defined in terms of presupposed background knowledge). The Teaching Fellowship results in:

1. educational material including a tutorial (see the tutorial guidelines for more information, and peruse previously created educational resources),
2. a teaching workshop for peers,
3. a list of requirements (a.o. user needs, wishlist, bugs),
4. a web text (e.g. blogpost) for CLARIAH about the Teaching Fellowship experience. Here are some examples that specifically focus on the CLARIAH Media Suite.

How do I apply?

You can apply by submitting a proposal in accordance with the Research Fellow proposal template or the Teaching Fellow proposal. The proposal must be written in English. The deadline for the application and other important dates can be found in the Important Dates section below.

Who can apply?

Anyone employed under a contract for the duration of the proposed project period at a Dutch organisation eligible for NWO funding may apply.

How much budget is available for this call?

The total budget for this call is €100K. Each Fellowship can be awarded up to €20.000 euro, including research time and material costs. The budget, therefore, allows for a maximum of 5 projects.

What and where are the CLARIAH tools, services and datasets?

The proposals should be executed with tools, services, and datasets available in the CLARIAH infrastructure. A list of the CLARIAH tools, services and datasets, and a short description and a contact person for each of these is available via the CLARIAH Fellowship Call Data and Tools Overview. It is strongly advised to consult with these contact persons to assess the current state of the data/software and its suitability for the research question or the teaching purposes at hand. Please note that most datasets, especially the cultural heritage collections, are in Dutch. Many of the tools and services are also suited for Dutch only. The language of the datasets is indicated in the list. Applications working with other languages than Dutch are, of course, highly welcome.

What can be applied for?

You can apply for:

• Funding for a maximum of 2 working months for 1 person, in accordance with the standard NWO/VSNU rules and applicable tariffs as per 1-7-2025, (see The Universiteiten van Nederland, and NWO)
• Budget allocated for small material costs (e.g. for costs for attending a conference or workshop, video or text editing, light programming, etc.) not to exceed a total of €2.000 euro.

What in-kind contribution is expected?

You are expected to bring in 1 person month of effort as in-kind into the project.

When does the fellowship start?

The Fellowship starts as soon as possible after approval of the project, but no later than September 2026.

How long does a Fellowship last?

A Fellowship typically lasts 6 months, but in special circumstances, a longer period up to 12 months may be allowed upon request.

What are the evaluation criteria for the Fellowship proposals?

The general criteria are:

• Does the proposal aim to achieve what is requested in the Fellowship call?
• Have the goals of the project been clearly defined?
• Does the project hold the promise of interdisciplinarity and/or cross-fertilization with other disciplines? (Interdisciplinarity)
• Can it be expected that this project leads to requirements that are also useful for other research questions and teaching purposes that the data and /or software are appropriate for? (Generalisability)
• Are the required deliverables clearly specified and is there a concrete plan for realising these deliverables?
• Has a CLARIAH contact person been consulted on the data/software to be used and does the proposal report on this consultation?

For Research Fellowships:

• Has the research question been formulated explicitly?
• Are the suggested data and /or software suitable for addressing the research question?
• Have suitable publication channels (e.g. journals, conferences) been explicitly identified in the proposal?
• Is the research question focused enough to be carried out in 3 person months with a lead time of 6 months, and broad enough to adequately test the CLARIAH-NL infrastructure? (Feasibility)

For Teaching Fellowships:

• Has a clear category of students and/or colleagues been identified for the course and the teaching material? (User-orientation)
• Has the course context been clearly defined and does the project align with the course learning goals? (Contextualisation)
• Is the educational project focused enough to be carried out in 3 person months with a lead time of 6 months, and broad enough to adequately test (parts of) the CLARIAH-NL infrastructure? (Feasibility)

Formal compliance:

• Conformance to the prescribed format and proposal template.
• Submission before the set deadline, using the means described.
• Conformance to the prescribed language of the proposal.

The CLARIAH-NL Board also takes the distribution of the proposals over the various data and tools into consideration, so that as many parts of the CLARIAH infrastructure play a role in these fellowships.

Who can I approach if I have a question about this call?

Send any questions via e-mail to Sabrina Sauer at s.c.sauer@rug.nl

Will there be future CLARIAH calls for Fellowships?

This call is the second CLARIAH-NL Fellowship call issued by the SSHOC-NL project. SSHOC-NL is a consortium of research infrastructures aimed at creating a state-of-the-art ecosystem of services, data, and tools for the social sciences and humanities sector. The project facilitates cooperation between the CLARIAH-NL (Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities in the Netherlands) entity and ODISSEI (Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations). This collaboration enables ground-breaking interdisciplinary research that focuses on pressing societal questions such as climate change and political polarization among other topics. The overarching SSHOC-NL project foresees annual opportunities for at least one call for Fellowships, for the duration of the SSHOC-NL project (until the end of 2028).

How do I apply?

You can apply by writing a Fellowship proposal using one of the Fellowship proposal templates and by submitting your proposal via Easychair before the set submission deadline.

Download the research fellow proposal template

Download the teaching fellow proposal template

Important dates