From telescope to Macroscope.
Last week, ODISSEI and CLARIAH celebrated the official Macroscope as well as ten other projects that are part of high-quality large-scale scientific infrastructure (LSRI).
Rianne Letschert, the new Minister of Education, Culture and Science, joined the celebration of the allocation of 197 million euros across 11 major infrastructure projects by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). In her speech, she underlined that this LSRI-round not only shows large investments in machines such as telescopes, but also in innovative, more conceptual instruments such as the Macroscope, serving research in the social sciences and humanities.
With €16.8 million in funding from NWO, a national consortium of universities and research institutes will build the world’s first Macroscope. This groundbreaking research infrastructure is designed to help scientists observe and understand how societies evolve over time. The Macroscope will provide researchers with a secure and ethical way to link and analyse large-scale datasets across social, cultural, and digital domains. It aims to reveal the dynamics that shape societies, how trust develops, how culture changes, and how communities respond to an ever-shifting flow of information.
By bringing together the strengths of ODISSEI (the national infrastructure for social and economic data) and CLARIAH-NL (the national infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities), the Macroscope will create a living, ethical, and secure observatory of Dutch society—one that captures both data and the human stories behind it.
Bezoek van minister Letschert aan de Nationale Roadmap Grootschalige Wetenschappelijke Infrastructuur Source: https://www.nwo.nl/nieuws/echte-vooruitgang-is-afhankelijk-van-grootschalige-wetenschappelijke-infrastructuur