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CCP-AHC Town Hall 2025 – Agenda

City of Durham (13270321503)

The most recent version of this agenda can be found online at https://www.ccpahc.ac.uk/activities/town-hall-2025/agenda/ or at the QR code below:

QR code link to agenda

Location and Date

Delta Hotels by Marriott Durham Royal County
Old Elvet
Durham
DH1 3JN
United Kingdom

Open Street Map

Thursday 22 May 2025

9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., followed by a drinks and light snacks reception

Parking is available. Delegates are responsible for their own charges. Further details about the venue, including accessibility and sustainability information can be found on the venue website.

Session overview

Introduction and Session 1 consist of presentations. Working Sessions 2-4 consist of lightning talks followed by facilitated group discussion.

9:00 a.m. Coffee and networking

9:30 a.m. Introduction [hybrid] – The story so far: The (evergreen) potential for large-scale compute in Arts, Humanities, and Culture Research

Dr Eamonn Bell (Durham University/CCP-AHC)

10:00 a.m. Session 1 [hybrid] - Introducing CCP-AHC and the digital research infrastructure (DRI) landscape

In this session, representatives from CCP-AHC, STFC, and the digital research infrastructure (DRI) community will introduce the project, the notable features of the Collaborative Computational Project (CCP) model, as well as overview ongoing initiatives relevant to the goals of the community. 

Five-minute lightning talks from:

  • Dr Eamonn Bell (Durham University), CCP-AHC in a Nutshell
  • Prof Karina Rodriguez Echavarria (University of Brighton), The Digital Skills in Arts and Humanities (DISKAH) Network
  • Prof Jeyan Thiyagalingam (STFC), CCPs, CoSeC, and the STFC Scientific Computing Department
  • Dr Martin Wynne (University of Oxford), The Oxford Text Archive (OTA)
  • Dr Phil Hasnip (University of York), UKRI Living Benchmarks

11:00 a.m. Coffee break

11:15 a.m. Working Session 2 [in-person only] – Discovering HPC & AI codes, pipelines, workflows, and infrastructures

One of the main deliverables of "Toward a new CCP for Arts, Humanities, and Culture research (CCP-AHC)" is a roadmap for the community, which outlines the future of the project over the next 5-7 years. The first draft of this roadmap is due by the end of 2025. This document will be used by funders, community members, and other stakeholders to understand the needs of computationally-intensive AH&C research and innovation as they relate to large-scale compute.

Following a short briefing, in-person participants will discuss a set of questions around a common theme, facilitated by CCP-AHC Delivery Team members.

The number below relates to the table at which the topic is first discussed:

  1. What codes, pipelines, and workflows are being used today with HPC & AI infrastructures (and other DRI supporting large-scale compute) to produce computationally intensive arts, humanities, and culture (AH&C) research?
  2. How should these projects be identified, evaluated, and prioritised to promote best research software practice while covering a diversity of research domains and application types?
  3. What are the principal critical dependencies that AH&C codes, pipelines, and workflows require (incl. data, software, libraries, hardware, and people)?
  4. Which infrastructures are the most successful at overcoming the bottlenecks and common challenges faced by AH&C researchers and innovators when accessing large-scale compute?

1:00 p.m. Lunch [catered]

2:00 p.m. Working Session 3 [in-person only] – Emerging and future users of large-scale compute infrastructure and their use cases

  1. What is the typical profile of the current and future AH&C users of large-scale compute, including HPC, AI research resource, and other advanced computing infrastructures?
  2. How can community members be supported in the development and preparation of use cases/case studies that are useful to evidence impact and the value of large-scale compute infrastructures to AH&C researchers and innovators?
  3. Do existing benchmarks (e.g. MLCommons benchmarks) capture typical AH&C uses, or do new benchmarks need to be defined and designed for AH&C users?
  4. What lessons can be learned from other communities (including the other CCPs) about who have tackled similar challenges about growing the adoption of large-scale compute in the past?

3:30 p.m. Coffee break

3:45 p.m. Working Session 4 [in-person only] – Driving and measuring positive change within the community

  1. What should be the key elements of the CCP-AHC roadmap through to the end of the scoping period (end 2026) and beyond (2027-)?
  2. How should computational and scientific resource within CCP-AHC - including the workplan for computational scientist (1.0 FTE) and RSE resource (0.6 FTE) - be prioritised during the life of the scoping project?
  3. Where are the key points of influence that the community can advocate for HPC, AI resource, and other DRI (e.g. in procurement, design of benchmarks, in cross-council DRI activities)?
  4. How should CCP-AHC ensure that community members are engaged in its decision-making and planning, with a particular emphasis on representing HEIs and RPOs of various sizes, research culture, and the project's relation to UKRI priorities (e.g. Net Zero)?

4:45 p.m. Wrap-up/Next steps

Details of next engagement activities to be announced, along with timeline for workplan, draft roadmap, and further discovery of projects and stakeholders.

5:00 p.m. Reception

Light snacks and soft drinks

6:30 p.m. Close

Followed by dinner at own expense in Durham at a restaurant within walking distance (10 minutes) of the meeting venue. If you are interested in joining please email the CCP-AHC project manager, Clare Collyer.