This year the focus is on:
Digital sovereignty in research
Modern research increasingly depends on infrastructure we don't control: cloud providers, publishing platforms, foundation models, subscriptions on terms that can change without notice. Open or public alternatives don't match the speed, scale, user-friendliness and continuity of the largest commercial providers, leaving many researchers caught between dependence and compromise. The result: a research ecosystem that's fragile, unreliable, and unsustainable.
This call treats digital sovereignty as a research and engineering challenge: what would a sovereign digital research landscape look like and what does it take to enable, build and sustain it — technically, methodologically, legally, ethically…?
The winner will organize a workshop at the Lorentz Center in Leiden and receive research software engineering support from the Netherlands eScience Center.
We look forward to receiving your (1-page) expression of interest by 25 October 2025.
For more information on how to submit, please see the eScience Center - Lorentz Competition page on our website.
