Challenge Call 2025: six project ideas selected to turn into SSH proposals
The TDCC-SSH team is excited to share the project ideas that will move forward in our Call 2025 process. Our Assessment & Selection Committee has evaluated the 14 viable project plans that were submitted for collaborative projects for the NWO TDCC Challenge call.
All of these submissions have gone through our transparent process, including sharing the initial project ideas online and the online matchmaking sessions.
Review by committee
The review was based on various factors, such as how well an idea fits into our roadmap, the extent to which it represents collaboration, and the tangible nature of the outcomes. The committee's ratings based on these criteria resulted in a prioritisation list of the project plans. Starting at the top of the list, we move forward project plans until the total budget of €1,152,243 for this round is used up. This led to a total of five new project plans moving forward. Over the coming months, the submitters will develop these plans into full proposals to submit to the NWO.
Here the list of project ideas that will be turned into proposals:
| Project plan title | Primary contact person | Organizations involved in creating project plan |
| Byte Me: A national portal facilitating responsible LLM use in SSH Research | Santosh Ilamparuthi | TU Delft, Open Universiteit, VU, SURF, TiU, UU |
| FORTES - Framework for Open Research on Trade and Economic Sources | Sabine Go | VU/IISH, UvA, Huygens Institute, UU, UM, RU, University of Regensburg... |
| HANDS-RX2 -Handwritten Archival Data Structuring with Recognition Extra squared | Björn Quanjer | RU, University of St. Martin, IISH |
| LEGIS: Legal Ecosystem for Governance, Intermediaries, and Standards in SSH Research Data | Bora Lushaj | EUR, TU Delft, TiU, SURF |
| Unlocking Online Public Data for Research: Legal and Technical Foundations for Web Scraping | Maliheh Mahlouji | TiU, EUR, UU |
If you have input for one (or more) of these projects and have not yet had the opportunity to express it to the project team, please feel free to still reach out to them. This also applies if you would like to be involved in the project in any capacity, e.g. providing in-kind expertise or support. The contact information can be found through the complete list of submissions.
Waiting list
In case the team of one of these ideas decides not to proceed, the next projects may be given the opportunity to write a full proposal. The runners-up have been placed on a waiting list:
| Project idea title | Primary contact person |
| Atlas of Bias | Mrinalini Luthra |
| ESTIMAETD! - Enrich the Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Multimodal, Artistic, and Extra-Textual Data & Outputs! | Andrew Hoffman |
| Toward a National Framework for ZooMS in Dutch Archaeology | Willemien de Kock |
Project plans not listed here will not be considered for this call. However, the submitters are welcome to develop their ideas further and submit them again for other funding opportunities, including future TDCC-SSH calls.
Learnings for the future
We are very pleased with the selection of project plans selected in this second iteration of the call, and we are happy with how well our community-involving process worked. We are keen to use the feedback to further refine and improve our transparent process for future rounds. We look forward to the collaborative spirit continuing to play a major role in the development, execution and impact of these projects.
One previously selected project resubmitting
One of the projects that was selected in our Challenge Call 2024 was unsuccessful in its final submission to the NWO. As their budget allocation was added to this year's call, and as they were selected by the committee last year, the project is resubmitting an updated proposal this year. This will not be possible in future calls.
| Project plan title | Primary contact person | Organizations involved in creating project plan |
| Towards FAIRifying legal software for data extraction, exploration, and annotation* | Shashank Chakravarthy | UM, TiU, RUG, LU, RU, UU, EUR, Avans, TNO/UvA |
As with the five 2025 projects, please reach out to the primary contact person if you have input or want to get involved in some way.
Thank you all for being part of this!
