Today, computer technologies have a transformative impact on the way we conduct research across the academy, including humanities and social sciences. However, to produce really novel insights, it appears that the computational approaches to culture and society require collaboration of experts across the whole spectrum of academic disciplines. CCS-Lab (Computing Culture and Society Laboratory) is a research center at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (UWB), based at the Department of Philosophy which provides a platform for UWB researchers and academics at the intersection of modern information and communication technologies and the human sciences (Digital Humanities, Computational Social Science, Cultural Analytics, Philosophy of AI) to foster transdisciplinary collaboration by dismantling traditional disciplinary boundaries. Meanwhile it is home of the joint research team between University of West Bohemia and Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Further it aims to enhance digital literacy and promote open science practices among students and researchers at the Faculty of Arts, UWB.

The idea of a laboratory is not that much concerned by equipment; it is primarily about a collaborative approach to solving of precisely defined research problems. People do not start to collaborate until they get in touch regularly. This is especially the case when such collaboration requires expertise in more than one discipline and therefore requires to move out of the comfort zone of our own disciplinary paradigms.

The research agenda of the Lab consists of employing computational methods in solving humanities & social science research problems. The most important methodological paradigms are text-mining, network analysis, geographic information systems (GIS) and agent-based modelling (ABM).

Výzkumná agenda CCS-Lab spočívá ve využívání výpočetních metod při řešení výzkumných problémů v oblasti humanitních a společenských věd. Nejdůležitějšími metodologickými paradigmaty jsou text-mining, síťová analýza, geografické informační systémy (GIS) a agentové modelování (ABM).

Aarhus University: Social Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean, research grant no. 31119103

Grant Agency of Czech Republic: The Cultural Evolution of Moralizing Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean: A Distant Reading Approach, research grant no. 20-01464S

Czech Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth: The Origins of Modern Encyclopaedism (TOME): Launching Evolutionary Metaphorology, ERC CZ research grant no. LL 2320 (collaborative partner)

EUPeace, the European University for Peace, Justice, and Inclusive Societies

Visit the CCS-Lab website, which presents research and other academic activities of the CCS-Lab team. https://ccs.zcu.cz/

Head of the CCS-LAB: Mgr. Vojtěch Kaše, Ph.D.; kase@ff.zcu.cz

Workshop Machine modelling of philosophical text, info.zcu.cz, 17.03.2023 https://info.zcu.cz/clanek.jsp?id=6820

Workshop Computing the Past: Computational Approaches to the Dynamics of Cultures and Societies, Info.zcu.cz, 13.10.2022, https://info.zcu.cz/clanek.jsp?id=6823

Workshop Computational history meets history of science, info.zcu.cz, 18.10.2024 https://info.zcu.cz/Workshop-Computational-history-meets-history-of-science/clanek.jsp?id=7212

Workshop EU AI ACT: A Challenge for Europe and Beyond, info.zcu.cz, 21.04.2024 https://info.zcu.cz/EU-AI-ACT--A-Challenge-for-Europe-and-Beyond/clanek.jsp?id=6444