The QDLCA27 pre-conference workshop, organised by Dr Andrea Farina (King's College London), is a satellite event of the Quantitative Diachronic Linguistics and Cultural Analytics 2027 (QDLCA27) conference. The workshop will take place from Monday 11 (afternoon) to Wednesday 13 (morning) January 2027. It is supported by a CLARIN-funded initiative (Days 1–2) and by the COALA – Computational Corpus Annotation for Quantitative Analysis of Latin Lexical Semantics project (Day 3), which also underpins the organisation of QDLCA27. Bringing together researchers interested in digital resources, computational methods, and linguistic annotation, the workshop is designed to provide participants with methodological knowledge and practical experience in the quantitative study of language change, while fostering collaboration across the historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and digital humanities communities.

The increasing availability of digitised texts, linguistic resources, and computational tools has transformed research in historical linguistics. However, making effective use of these opportunities requires a clear understanding of how data are created, structured, annotated, and analysed. This workshop addresses key challenges in quantitative diachronic research, including the use of research infrastructures, the management and interpretation of historical datasets, annotation methodologies, and the development of reproducible workflows.

The first two days of the workshop focus on research infrastructures, tools, and methodological approaches for quantitative diachronic linguistics. Participants will explore how digital resources and computational methods can support research on language variation and change, while also discussing practical challenges related to data access, annotation, comparability, and analysis. The workshop includes opportunities for participants to discuss their own research interests and datasets, fostering exchange among researchers working with different languages, periods, and methodological approaches. The final day, funded by the COALA project, focuses on computational approaches to diachronic lexical semantics and provides insights into the development of large-scale annotated resources for the study of semantic change in historical texts.

Confirmed invited speakers are Prof Marco Passarotti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) and Dr Megan Bushnell (University of Oxford), who will share perspectives on computational approaches, research infrastructures, and digital resources for the study of historical language data.

The workshop is aimed primarily at PhD students and early career researchers who wish to develop their understanding of how linguistic annotation and digital research infrastructures can support quantitative analyses of language change. It is suitable for researchers in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and digital humanities, including those who are beginning to integrate computational methods into their work. The workshop aims to equip participants with the conceptual and technical foundations needed to engage critically and creatively with quantitative approaches to diachronic linguistics.

The workshop also builds on the broader research community developed through the seminar series Data in Historical Linguistics and is part of the activities of the King's Linguistics Network. Together, these initiatives promote dialogue on the role of digital data, computational approaches, and quantitative methods in advancing research on language history and linguistics more broadly.

Registration and expressions of interest

Participation in the workshop is free, but places are limited and capped to 20. Researchers interested in attending are invited to submit an expression of interest by 31 October 2026 through the registration form below. Applicants will be asked to provide a short cover letter explaining their research interests and reasons for wishing to participate.

https://forms.gle/H2DjTn7DaKcM8CXZ7

Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application during the following week.

For enquiries, please contact Dr Andrea Farina at andrea.farina@kcl.ac.uk.

About CLARIN

The first two days of the workshop (11–12 January 2027) are supported by CLARIN ERIC (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure), the European Research Infrastructure Consortium that provides access to language resources, tools, services, and expertise for researchers working across the humanities and social sciences. CLARIN promotes the development of interoperable language data and computational methods, enabling researchers to discover, access, analyse, and share linguistic resources through a distributed European infrastructure. As part of the CLARIN-funded activities, the workshop particularly welcomes participants from countries that are members or observers of the CLARIN network, while remaining open to researchers from all backgrounds.

About COALA

The third day of the workshop (13 January 2027) is organised within the framework of COALA – Computational Corpus Annotation for Quantitative Analysis of Latin Lexical Semantics, successfully evaluated by the European Research Council and funded by UK Research and Innovation. COALA develops computational methods and corpus annotation tools for the large-scale quantitative analysis of semantic variation and change in Latin across more than two millennia of textual history. It combines advances in historical word sense disambiguation, corpus linguistics, and computational semantics to transform research on historical lexical semantics and provide new insights into how meaning changes across genres, registers, and cultural contexts over time.