From 4 to 7 May 2026 in Brussels, Belgium, this EDDI-SODHA Summer School brings together experts from physical and digital archives, galleries, museums, and libraries to discuss vital questions around digital archiving, ontologies, the cost of archiving, and more.

The week opens with a pre-Summer School discussion on the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), offering a shared foundation in high-quality data documentation through group exercises and discussion. Over the following days, sessions address the practical, methodological and legal dimensions of digital archiving, ontologies, vocabularies, and shared meanings, and the broader impact of archiving on collective memory and open science.

Combining presentations and group activities, the programme provides both conceptual insight and practical guidance on archival best practices, with explicit highlighting on data documentation, in contemporary research and heritage contexts.

• Programme
• Speaker bios

Programme

4 May 2026: Pre Summer School Training

• An organised tour at a museum of a partner institute in Brussels
  To Be Announced

• An introduction to DDI by Alina Danciu (CDSP, SciencesPo) and Becky Oldroyd (CLOSER, UCL) 
  Join us for a half‑day workshop, "An introduction to metadata and the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard". We’ll explore the foundations of research data, metadata, and metadata standards, building a shared understanding of the concepts that underpin high‑quality data documentation. The session will focus on the DDI standard - the most commonly used social science metadata standard - and will include practical activities and group discussions to help you put the ideas introduced in this workshop into practice.

5 May 2026: Memory, method and meaning

• Digital archiving, the how’s the what’s and the why’s by István László Gyimes (State Archives of Belgium, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
  A discussion and workshop on the necessities of digital archiving, the need for awareness raising for users, and the considerations around different data types. We will discuss what one needs to build, upkeep, and develop a digital archive, and how these goals can be achieved. Following the presentation, group activities will further encourage discussions.
   
• Law and order (of things) by Louise de Béthune (State Archives of Belgium, KU Leuven)
  How does the law influence the archivists’ tasks? Many archival aspects are regulated by national and European law. Data in particular is heavily regulated at the European level. How does the law understand the archive, data, metadata, research, an original work, an author? As archivists and data stewards it is important to understand how this influences the rights within the archive and the obligations of (digital) archives, but how to apply them in practice? These questions will be tackled in this workshop, alongside a broader introduction and discussion on the applicable laws.
   
• Sharing meaning, vocabularies in a European Context by Róza Vajda (ONTOLISST team at ELTE Centre for Social Sciences)
  Digital archiving faces a dual challenge in making research data accessible: how to preserve their integrity, while opening up their assets for broader use. Data curation methods must acknowledge traditional approaches as well as be adaptable to recent social exigencies and technological innovation in rendering data interoperable. Our session explores the practices at various European archives in developing thematic metadata to explore their holdings and create bridges to connect with similar datasets in other repositories. Through exercises of labelling research documents the participants will receive experiential evidence of the ambiguity of meanings and the irreducible uncertainty of interpretation.

6 May 2026: The impact of archiving 
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• Curating the collective memory by Filip Strubbe & Johan van der Eycken (State Archives of Belgium)
  Curating archives as part of our collective memory involves a continuous process comprising three core activities: (1) appraisal, through collaboration with public bodies to identify records eligible for permanent preservation; (2) disclosure of archival holdings by means of inventories and other research instruments; and (3) support for diverse user groups in locating relevant information. Each of these stages presents specific methodological and organisational challenges.
  The first part of the presentation introduces these principles in the context of physical archiving, focusing on traditional archival practices and their practical constraints.
  The second part addresses digital archiving, where the same core functions are performed under significantly altered conditions. Born-digital materials, rapidly increasing data volumes, and evolving legal and regulatory frameworks place substantial pressure on established workflows. Addressing these challenges requires adaptive procedures to ensure the long-term integrity, authenticity, accessibility, and usability of digital archives.
   
• Open science: connecting archives to make them by Stephanie Buyle and Wim Fremout (KIK/IRPA)
  The transition from siloed paper archives to digital ecosystems is vital for aligning heritage research with Open Science. At the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), the H-SEARCH project modernizes 75 years of interdisciplinary intervention dossiers—spanning conservation and material science—by migrating disparate formats into a unified framework of machine-actionable FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs). This initiative addresses the challenges of a heterogeneous data landscape characterized by inconsistent metadata and limited interoperability.To resolve these issues, KIK-IRPA established a stepwise pre-archival workflow that first consolidates legacy and born-digital dossiers into a controlled "pre-archive" environment. This foundational stage organizes disparate data to prepare for the current transition toward embracing fully-realised Digital Objects. Methodologically, this involves implementing over 40 data models aligned with international standards within the Cordra repository. This architecture links archival metadata to institutional and external platforms, ensuring long-term preservation according to OAIS principles while enhancing data discoverability. Metadata created in Cordra are fed back into the pre-archive, where the archival workflow starts. Digital files and their metadata are then bundled, preserved, and stored in a dedicated long-term preservation environment, ensuring that the data remain accessible, reliable, and reusable over time.      
  Finally, these FDOs are shared via the BALaT+ platform, which integrates multiple institutional data sources. While the project promotes "as open as possible" access, it employs structured metadata and tiered controls to manage sensitive administrative and personal data in compliance with GDPR. Ultimately, H-SEARCH demonstrates how rigorous metadata schemas can maintain data privacy and integrity while contributing to a transparent, FAIR-compliant scientific record.

7 May 2026: Archival best practices

• Putting the re- in research by Francis Strobbe (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences)
  In the natural sciences, the "re-" in research is often the difference between a single-use data point and a lasting scientific legacy. While traditional biology once relied on physical archives, isolated field notes, and static papers, the modern era demands a transition to digital ecosystems where data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). This session, hosted by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, explores how we ensure a long-lasting legacy for biological research and datasets. We will move beyond the theory of archiving to the practical implementation of FAIR Principles. By implementing the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), we ensure that biological observations - from genomic sequences to 19th-century museum specimens - remain machine-actionable and ready for re-discovery.

Speaker bios

• Dr Becky Oldroyd is a Metadata Manager at CLOSER. She is responsible for preparing, quality-checking and managing the metadata in CLOSER’s research tool, CLOSER Discovery, which enables the research and data community to find, assess and understand UK longitudinal population study data.
• Alina Danciu is a team leader at Sciences Po, Paris. She specialises in DDI and CoreTrustSeal. She recently secured funding as a Principal Investigator on the FAIRwDDI project, working on FAIR and DDI research, as well as DDI training resources and AI-assisted metadata curation.
• Louise de Béthune is a PhD researcher in law. She works on the intersection between data legislation and (digital) archives. She is the legal counterpart of the DAMAR project. Within SODHA she focusses on the legal requirements of accessing sensitive data for research purposes, and it’s translation into practice (including in metadata). She holds a master and Manama in IT and IP law from KULeuven, where she is currently pursuing her PhD at the Centre for IT and IP law (CITIP). She has previous experience as a legal advisor for the digitisation of the Flemish government.
• István László Gyimes, PhD is a digital archivist working at the State Archives or Belgium, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His main areas of interest include statistical disclosure risk control, FAIR-data sharing, sensitive data handling, and awareness raising for researchers about archiving their data.
• Filip Strubbe is working in Department 5 (“Contemporary Archives”) of the National Archives in Brussels where he manages archives originating from central government bodies (1795-present). He is responsible for contacts and archive transfers with federal government services and public utility institutions. In addition, he is responsible for the disclosure and valorization of transferred archives, including handling questions from Belgian and foreign genealogists, citizens seeking justice, students, and professional researchers.
• Johan Van der Eycken is Head of the Digital Archiving Service at the Belgian State Archives. Within the State Archives, he has been active in both historical and digital archiving roles. He currently leads the development of digital archiving policy for the Belgian federal government and oversees the DAMAR Project and in general the SODHA initiative. His work includes research into the long‑term preservation and accessibility of digital‑born archives.
• Róza Vajda holds an MA in sociology from the New School for Social Research, New York. Currently, she works at the Research Documentation Centre, ELTE Centre for Social Sciences. Her main responsibilities include managing and developing the Voices of the 20th Century Archive, a digital repository of Hungarian qualitative sociological research. She has been involved in several national and international research projects over the past 20 years in the fields of gender, ethnicity and minority studies, equal treatment policies, social movements and the history of Hungarian sociology.
• Stephanie Buyle is a Research Data Manager at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), where she has been part of the Research Data Management (RDM) unit since 2024. She has been working at the institution since 2016 as a researcher in heritage science data management. With a background in history and archival studies, complemented by additional training in programming, her work focuses on bridging heritage science, data stewardship, and digital research infrastructures. She is actively involved in projects supporting the digital transformation of heritage research, including HESCIDA, H-SEARCH, DIGILAB.BE, PRISM, and PASTFORWARD.AI.
• Wim Fremout is head of the Research Data Management (RDM) unit at KIK-IRPA since 2024. He is (or was) coordinator of several projects (PRISM, DIGILAB.be, H-SEARCH, HESCIDA) funded by the federal government and is/was involved in multiple Horizon projects, such as E-RIHS, ECHOES and ARTEMIS. He previously worked in the painting lab at KIK-IRPA as a heritage scientist since 2003. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from Ghent University (2014) and an associate degree in programming from Howest University of Applied Sciences (2021).
• Francis Strobbe, PhD is a scientific data manager at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS). He works on the design and implementation of data infrastructures for biodiversity research, environmental monitoring, and open science. With a background in evolutionary ecology, his work focuses on data interoperability, FAIR data principles, and the development of APIs, data pipelines, and visualization tools that support research and policy. He is currently also active as a data steward within the Belgian Federal Open Science Cloud (FedOSC).