Virtual Research Environment

Summary

The results of the DFG Research Uroup will be integrated into a multimodal database that will be made permanently available to the academic community.

Subproject 1 is designing a multimodal database as the technical infrastructure of the Research Unit, in which events, works and people can be stored and linked in a structured way. In addition to a basic mapping and evaluation of antiziganist images from paintings to pictorial advertisements, the digital research environment as a multimodal database also contains moving images, audio data and text sources for systematic linking with the relevant accompanying materials and discourses of all the disciplines involved. In accordance with the content-related tasks, reception paths and reproduction relationships are to become visible within the research environment through semi-automatic analysis with image-processing algorithms, so that orders of the material can be visualized from the multimodal database. Georeferencing is used to track the tracing paths spatially.

Research questions

1. How can an openly accessible research environment be set up that does not affirm stereotypes and reproduce critical sources?

2. How can affected communities be involved in the development of the research environment?

3. to what extent can sensitive data be presented, and where are CARE and FAIR principles in direct contradiction?

Workshop „Research Data and Knowledge Orders“

Philipps-Universität Marburg, 4–5 September 2025

The workshop “Research Data and Knowledge Orders,” organized by Subproject 1 and held from September 4–5, 2025, at Philipps University Marburg, discussed the possibilities of multimodal research environments based on relational and multimodal databases. Particular attention was given to the degree of interconnection of source data and the development of shared metadata standards. The subprojects coordinated their approaches to the joint use of research data and incorporated perspectives of Sinti and Roma communities in order to avoid marginalizing forms of data representation. In addition, questions concerning the practical implementation of the CARE principles, as well as the opportunities and challenges of visibility and long-term archiving, were addressed.

The aim of the workshop was to design a shared virtual research environment in which sources can be systematically recorded, interconnected, and made usable for collaborative research. From the outset, special emphasis was placed on meeting ethical requirements, particularly in handling sensitive and discriminatory content.