RSE Capacity Enhancement Project

Practical guidance and patterns for research software engineering in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and Indigenous research contexts.

About the project

RSE-CEP is a co-investment partnership between the HASS Digital Research Hub, ANU and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons (DOI: 10.3565/x5f6-mw53). The project will develop resources for research software engineers (RSE), provide infrastructure for software documentation, and support high-quality research software practice across humanities and social science (HASS) research communities.

The HASS & Indigenous (HASS & I) research community faces a shortage of RSE expertise, leading to fragmented development practices and inconsistent maturity across disciplines. Researchers and technical teams lack access to architectural guidance, recommended patterns, and technical roadmaps. As a result, they produce inefficiencies, increased cybersecurity risk, and software that is difficult to sustain beyond individual projects. As artificial intelligence (AI) tools enabled by Large Language Models (LLMs) become increasingly prevalent, the need for coordinated, sector-wide RSE capability is more pressing than ever.

Our growing pattern library will capture proven solutions to recurring engineering challenges, from data governance to software architecture and research workflow development. Future outputs will include a technology roadmap and architectural principles.

Learn more about the project on the ARDC website.