From Digital Dreams to Practices: Mapping 2025 DHNB Research Landscape

The 9th Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Conference “Digital Dreams and Practices” (DHNB 2025), held in Tartu, Estonia, showcased a broad range of research, methodological innovation, and institutional collaborations. This article provides an analytical overview of the conference programme, participation, and research profile and provides an analytical framing of the material represented in the book of abstracts. Drawing on conference metadata from the ConfTool system, author-supplied keywords and institutional affiliations, the article examines workshops, methodological trends, data types, and collaboration patterns. The paper analyses four interrelated dimensions: (1) the role of workshops and tutorials as laboratories for pedagogical innovation and infrastructural literacy; (2) dominant methodological trends, particularly the growing integration of artificial intelligence, linked open data, and multimodal cultural analytics; (3) the diversity of research materials, ranging from textual corpora to audiovisual, spatial, and networked data; and (4) institutional and international collaboration patterns shaping the regional research ecosystem. The article highlights how DHNB conferences function as a transnational hub where experimental “digital dreams” are translated into sustainable scholarly and infrastructural practices.