In recent years, the arts and humanities have seen a significant increase in the use of computational, statistical, and mathematical approaches. This kind of research is distinguished by its reliance on formal methods and the development of explicit, computational models – ranging from quantitative and statistical techniques to broader computational methods for processing and analysing data, as well as theoretical reflections on these approaches.

The CHR conference seeks to be a venue where scholars can present and publish computational work while maintaining a strong connection to traditional humanities inquiry. 

More specifically, the conference has two key goals:

• Building an inclusive community of researchers who apply computational and quantitative methods to humanities data in all its forms. We see this community as complementary to the broader digital humanities landscape and actively encourage participation from anyone bringing fresh perspectives to computational humanities.
• Promoting excellent research. This includes fostering transparency and reproducibility through open code and data, supporting research designs that clarify theoretical frameworks and methodologies, and better accommodating interdisciplinary work that blends computational methods with humanities-driven questions.

Topics of interest

We invite original research papers from a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Applications of statistical methods and machine learning to process, enrich and analyse humanities data, including new media and cultural heritage data;
• Hypothesis-driven humanities research, simulations and generative models;
• Development of new quantitative and empirical methods for humanities research;
• Modelling bias, uncertainty, and conflicting interpretation in the humanities;
• Evaluation methods, evaluation data sets and development of standards;
• Formal, statistical or quantitative evaluation of categorisation/periodisation for humanities data;
• Theoretical frameworks and epistemology for quantitative methods and computational humanities approaches;
• Translation and transfer of methods from other disciplines, approaches to bridge humanistic and statistical interpretations;
• Visualisation, dissemination (incl. Open science) and teaching in computational humanities;
• Potential and challenges of AI applications to humanities research.

To gain further insight into paper topics, please also refer to the proceedings of previous years: CHR2020, CHR2021, CHR2022, CHR2023, CHR2024, CHR2025.

Venue

The 2027 edition of the Computational Humanities Research conference will be hosted by the Centre for Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media at the University of Manchester from 5 to 8 January 2027. The conference will be held in person, with a virtual participation option available for those unable to attend on-site. More details will follow soon.

Important dates

1. Deadline for submissions: August 14, 2026, 23:59:59 UTC-12 (Anywhere on Earth)
2. Notification to authors: October 23, 2026
3. Registration opens: October 23, 2026
4. Deadline final, camera-ready version: November 13, 2026
5. Deadline for registration to the conference: December 12, 2026
6. Pre-conference workshops: January 5, 2027
7. Conference: January 6-8, 2027

Submission types

Long Papers: up to 6000 words (ca. 12 pages, references, abstract and tables/illustrations excluded). Long papers report on completed, original and unpublished results. Brevity of argument is preferred. Appendices are allowed to improve reproducibility, and may include information such as pre-processing decisions, model parameters, prompts, pseudocode, additional data or inputs/outputs examples, and other details. However, reviewers are not required to read the appendices and supplementary materials during review. The main text of each paper must be stand-alone, well-supported, and understandable without appendix information. Links to external information, code repositories, and data storage are allowed, but must be anonymised during the review process where necessary.

Short Papers (including Posters): up to 3000 words (ca. 6 pages, references, abstract and tables/illustrations excluded). Short papers report on focused contributions and may present work in progress. Short papers are presented either as short oral presentations or posters (authors may choose their preferred presentation format; the final decision on the format will be taken by the program committee). Appendices are allowed to improve reproducibility, and may include information such as pre-processing decisions, model parameters, prompts, pseudocode, additional data or inputs/outputs examples, and other details. However, reviewers are not required to read the appendices and supplementary materials during review. The main text of each paper must be stand-alone, well-supported, and understandable without appendix information. Links to external information, code repositories, and data storage are allowed, but must be anonymised during the review process where necessary.

Lightning Talks: Submit an abstract of up to 750 words (excluding references, tables and illustrations) to give a 3-minute presentation during a lightning talks session. This format can be well-suited for reporting work in progress, introducing ideas, preliminary results, or focused question-answer research. The presentations will be on-site.

Workshops: up to 1500 words. Workshops should be organised to be more interactive than the main conference. The workshops will take place before the conference, on January 5, 2027. Workshop proposals should describe:

• the aims and set up of the workshop,
• the academic background for the work,
• proposed length (e.g. half day or full day),
• an outline of the day, including the types of activities,
• the expected key outcomes,
• a short bio of each organiser or presenter, including their name, affiliation, and email address
• a plan for promoting the workshop to draw participants.
• specific requirements, including but not limited to special equipment (e.g. audio/video), software, physical space arrangements,
• any technical knowledge, skills, or experience participants should have prior to attending the workshop.

Submission instructions and review process

We welcome submissions from scholars of diverse backgrounds and particularly from underrepresented groups.

No extension of the submission deadline is planned.

Submissions should be written in English and must be formatted according to the LaTeX template produced by ACH (click to download ach-latex-en.zip). We recommend working in the online environment Overleaf. To start using Overleaf, open the following template file, select “Open as Template”, and sign in or create a new account: LaTeX Overleaf template.

Submissions are to be submitted anonymously. All submissions will be refereed through a double-blind peer review process with final acceptance decisions made by the Programme Chairs. Submissions that do not use the required template, are not anonymised, or lack references will be rejected without review. The review guidelines can be found here.

Papers should be submitted as PDF documents via the EasyChair conference management system: [Forthcoming].

At least one author of each accepted submission must register for the conference and present the paper or poster.

Accepted papers will be submitted for publication online through the Anthology of Computers and the Humanities.

Instructions for paper anonymisation

Any information which might help identify authors should be anonymised. To this end, please:

• do not include authors’ names and affiliations;
• use placeholders for code and data repositories, e.g. https://anonymous.4open.science/, https://zenodo.org/record/xxxxx;
• do not mention self-references in a way that can reveal the author’s identity, e.g. do not use “We previously demonstrated (Smith, 2002)” but “Smith (2022) previously demonstrated”;
• leave acknowledgements blank.

Anonymity period

The anonymity period runs until the notification of acceptance (October 23). To support double-blind review, authors are asked not to promote their submissions publicly (e.g. via social media, blogs, or mailing lists) during this period. However, CHR recognises the importance of early visibility, particularly for early-career researchers and interdisciplinary collaborations. Authors may post preprints (e.g., on arXiv, Zenodo, HAL, institutional repositories) before submission, provided they do not link to these from the anonymised paper.

Reviewers will be instructed to ignore any external identifiers and focus strictly on the anonymised submission. We also encourage empirical feedback: reviewers will be asked if they believe they can identify the authors and why, to help us assess how anonymity functions in practice.

Usage of AI

Emerging technologies are changing how some may conduct research. Authors are welcome to use any tool to conduct their research and prepare their papers, but they are responsible for ensuring that all content submitted is correct, sound, and original.

Authors who make use of generative and/or agentic AI in their research practice, such as for literature search, programming, and writing, are encouraged to add a reflection on their use of AI in their submission.

Questions?

Contact the organisers if you have any questions, specific requirements or concerns at pc@computational-humanities-research.org.