About the 2019 call
2019 marks the fourth call for proposals within the Europeana Research Grants Programme and the first year with a call intended to support events. Embracing Europeana’s main mission to support cultural heritage institutions in their digital transformation, we decided to fund proposals for events that bring together cultural heritage professionals and researchers, such as conferences, workshops, seminar series and summer schools.
The theme of this year’s call was Digital Cultural Heritage for Open Science, which we felt offered valuable food for thought about the limits and potential of the reuse of digital collections as a source for research. Receiving over 70 proposals from all corners of the European Union showed that we were not wrong. The current debate related to Research and Innovation at the EU’s policy level increasingly puts in evidence the need to conceive research in the dimension of Open Science.
We were impressed with the quality of these proposals, as well with the genuine interest in co-organising an event with Europeana which many demonstrated. Researchers still seem to take the lead in projects related to acquiring and producing awareness of the value of digital cultural heritage, with 56.2 % of all proposals coming from universities and research institutes. However, the 19.2% of proposals which came from cultural heritage institutions make us hope that the number of applications from this sector will increase in the upcoming years.
The awarded proposals
We are glad to announce and extend our congratulations to these winning proposals:
The University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Masterclasses for Open Digital Cultural Heritage, a proposal submitted by Dr Giovanni Colavizza, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities.
This proposal looks to develop a new event format: one-day masterclasses where a renowned expert or a group of researchers are hosted by a cultural heritage institution. Three masterclasses will take place at as many institutions in the Netherlands from April to June 2020 and will focus on the possible social impact of working with open digital cultural heritage: citizen-engaged heritage science, participatory education and training, organising and mentoring multidisciplinary research groups.
The Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium: A Research Engine for Linked (Open) Data Research on the Circulation of European and non-European Art. 1600-2000, a proposal submitted by Koenraad Brosens, full professor in Art History.
The Europeana grant will be used to organise a workshop in Leuven and a public event in Brussels in March 2020 around the concepts of Linked Open Data/Data Reconciliation, Standardization and Interoperability, Web Publishing. An interdisciplinary group of scholars from art history to cultural studies, from digital humanities to computer science, will address the linking of different digital platforms as a step that can pave the way to the discovery of new patterns, and the need for new forms of narratives that can make accessible new insights to a wider audience.
The Swedish National Heritage Board, Sweden: Enriching metadata - Enriching Research, a proposal submitted by Dr Åsa Larsson, project leader, in collaboration with Dr Anna Foka, Associate Professor in Information Technology and the Humanities and Leader/Manager of the Digital Humanities Initiative at the Institute for Archives, Museums and Libraries (ABM) at Uppsala University.
A joint effort by their two institutions will result in a three-day event in Stockholm in June 2020, during which researchers and heritage professionals will engage in a number of activities aimed at increasing their ability to find and enrich metadata.
The Digital Repository of Ireland: FAIR and Open Data. The opportunities for Humanities researchers, a proposal submitted by Dr Kathryn Cassidy, Software Engineer.
The DRI is a consortium consisting of three research institutes - the Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College and Maynooth University. In collaboration with the Research Alliance Data, it will organise a face-to-face training event in April 2020 followed by an online course in June 2020. They will address issues encountered by researchers as users and producers of FAIR data, and aim to improve the skills of the participants in finding and using particularly Humanities data.
We believe that the work done with these institutions in the coming months can lead not only to the organisation of events relevant in themselves but also to a longer legacy in terms of tangible outcomes such as reports, white papers and webinars. We also believe that the awarded proposals can become small but ambitious projects that will make Europeana Research walk a stretch of road together with relevant institutions.
We will keep you informed about the programmes and the final dates of the events via Europeana PRO, the Europeana Research Community mailing list and @EurResearch on Twitter, with the hope that you can join us. We also hope that the different format of these events will provide inspiration for similar activities at your institution or for the next call of the Europeana Research Programme, which will be announced through the same channels.
The decision-making process took place in three stages between the 1st and 20th November 2019. The Europeana Foundation is deeply grateful to the members of the Europeana Research Advisory Board who participated in the review committee this year together with the Europeana Research Coordinator: Professor Lorna Hughes (chair), Professor Costis Dallas, Professor Marianne Ping-Huang, Professor Seamus Ross.