Digital Humanities in Spain: evolution and current scenario

Digital Humanities (DH)has become a field of interest in Spain, especially in the last decade, despite having arrived later than in most other European countries. In fact, it has become a leading trend in research, either as a field of study and as a preferential financing topic. At the same time, because of its novelty, it is now under scrutiny by the research community and government institutions because neither the return of investment is clear nor the role that Spanish researchers can play within European-wide research infrastructures, such as DARIAH. In order to provide the global community of scholars working in this field with a greater understanding of the current Spanish scenario, LINHD (Laboratorio de Innovación de Humanidades Digitales -UNED) promoted a research on the evolution of DHin Spain in the last 25 years, using a quantitative approach. The objective of the study was to identify researchers in the field of DH and to explore their financing, institutional affiliations, research topics, and developed resources. Similar initiatives have been promoted in the past, producing internationally or regionally focused maps1, some of them still available online, with differences ranging from the geographical coverage to the types of data mapped. Other overviews on the subject have chosen a more qualitative approach, focused on identifying the most relevant steps in the evolution and consolidation of this research topic in the Iberian country2, still largely in place.