Four 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 2026 process. Our Assessment & Selection Committee has evaluated the 21 viable project plans that were submitted for collaborative project 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 sustainability 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 €800,000 for this round is used up. This led to a total of four 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 |
| ARRIVE — Archiving Routes of Residence: Integrating Voices, Visuals and Evidence (C2026-010) | Marleen Rensen | UvA, NIOD, City Archives Amsterdam, SURF, WO2net, Meertens Institute, Huygens |
| Building Stories: AI-Assisted Mapping of Oral and Written Histories onto 3DBAG (C2026-029) | Agostino Nickl | TU Delft, KNAW, Huygens, LU, CLARIAH-NL |
| ResearchVoice: Sovereign AI Transcription for Dutch Qualitative Research (C2026-009) | Leon van Ekeren | Saxion, DCC-PO, Rotterdam UAS, UAS Utrecht, Hanze UAS, Zuyd UAS, SURF, VU, LU, MU |
| SignKids: Archiving and unlocking child-centered sign language data (C2026-023) | Ellen Ormel | RU, LU, Nederlands Gebarencentrum, Kentalis, Max Planck Institute, DANS |
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.
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 third iteration of the call, and we are happy with how well our refined community-involving process worked once again. That being said, we encountered a much higher number of submissions this year, while simultaneously having less total funding available in the NWO call. Naturally, this led to a higher percentage of participants not being selected.
We will use the obversations we made and the feedback we received to further refine and improve our transparent process for future rounds. In the meantime, we look forward to the collaborative spirit continuing to play a major role in the development, execution and impact of the TDCC-SSH projects.
Published 7 September 2026.
