In 2015, the former “Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH)” of the Austrian Academy of Sciences was installed as a research institute with the declared intention of fostering the humanities by applying digital methods and tools to a wide range of academic fields. In late 2019, the institute underwent a major restructuring, which resulted in three main areas: Infrastructure and Services, Digital Humanities Research and Cultural Heritage Research. In the course of this reorganisation, a number of research groups were attached to the Institute.

Since 1 January 2020, the enlarged “Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH)” has been bringing together two focal points of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in one institute pursuing (a) basic research in the humanities in long-term projects for the development and preservation of cultural heritage and (b) research in the methodological and theoretical paradigms of digital documentation, processing, research and visualisation of the digital humanities. Within the ACDH-CH, both pillars are intended to increasingly cross-fertilise each other and, thus, contribute to the development of joint work on the rich treasure of Europe's cultural memory.

The infrastructural unit offers a growing portfolio of services: running a repository for digital resources, hosting and publishing data, developing software and working in a tightly knit network of specialised knowledge centres across Europe by offering advice and guidance to the research community.

In DH research, the team is mainly concerned with text- and language-related questions focusing on historical questions. Current projects cover a wide range of humanities domains, investigating technical standards, infrastructure components, semantic technologies and text technological methods. All of these activities are embedded within the European infrastructure consortia CLARIN-ERIC and DARIAH-EU.

The CH pillar of the ACDH-CH focuses on long term research activities of the ÖAW. The current CH research groups are mainly concerned with research on language, music, literature and biographies with a special emphasis on the Austrian context.