Last Wednesday, the NSF announced the second round of an international grant competition designed to spur cutting-edge research in the humanities and social sciences.  Called the “Digging into Data Challenge,” the competition specifically promotes large-scale, international and interdisciplinary analysis of large data sets in these fields.

The competition asks interested scholars to design methods and tools to analyze large data sets associated with a million books, or a million pages of newspaper, or a million songs, for example.

The announcement follows a successful trial round last year amongst teams of humanities experts, social scientists, and computer and information scientists.  This year, a total of 8 research funders are involved, with the United Kingdom’s Arts & Humanities Research Council and Economic & Social Research Council, the Netherlands’ Organization for Scientific Research and the United States’ Institute of Museum and Library Services adding to the list of funders continuing from last year.

Final applications are due June 16, 2011.

Learn all the details in the official NSF announcement, and visit the Digging into Data Challenge website.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)