In this episode, we talk with Kristina Thompson from Wageningen University about the intersection of historical data and public health research. She explains why the Netherlands has such rich data resources, how historical trends illuminate health and society even today, and how automation can help improve the records. Kristina also shares her experience working with Delpher, the digitised historical newspaper archive, as well as other historical archival collections.
Affiliations:

• Kristina Thompson, Assistant Professor at the University of Wageningen.
• Dr. Tom Emery – Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.delpher.nl/
https://www.wur.nl/nl/personen/km-kristina-thompson

In this episode, we talk with Mercè Crosas, Director of Computational Social Sciences at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and President of CODATA, about how AI is shaping the future of social science infrastructure. She reflects on her path into computational social science, explains what research infrastructures do and why they matter, and discusses how AI is already improving data access, discovery, and analysis. Mercè also explores what “AI-ready” infrastructures look like, how tools like Dataverse may evolve, and what skills researchers will need in an AI-driven research landscape.

Affiliations:

• Dr Mercè Crosas – Director of Computational Social Science and Humanities (CSSH) Lab at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). She also serves on the CODATA board and co-founded Dataverse.
• Dr. Tom Emery – Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.bsc.es/
https://codata.org/
https://dataverse.org/

In this episode, we talk with Flavio Hafner and Malte Luken from the eScience Center about how Research Software Engineering supports social science research. They discuss what RSEs do, how computational tools can transform projects, and how they help make research reproducible and sustainable. Flavio and Malte also share examples from real-world social science projects, explain the collaboration between RSEs and researchers, and explore the future opportunities for software-driven social research.

Affiliations:

• Flavio Hafner – Research Software Engineer at the Netherlands eScience Center. He works at the intersection of applied statistics, machine learning and social sciences
• Malte Lüken – Research Software Engineer at the Netherlands eScience Center. Malte is experienced in writing, evaluating and optimizing computational models in the domain of social sciences.
• Dr. Tom Emery – Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.esciencecenter.nl/