Deadline: 31-May-21
Europeana is seeking proposals for its Research Grants Programme to explore how the cultural heritage sector can make the best use of this participatory method with the collaboration of researchers and for the benefit of them.
They welcome proposals for conferences, workshops, seminar series, summer/autumn/winter/spring schools or training activities.
The Europeana Research Grants programme awards funding for events that can bring together cultural heritage professionals and researchers. In 2021, part of the amount is allocated to special prizes.
Themes
- The theme of the 2021 call is Crowd sourcing & Research.
- In 2020 the European Commission published the Europeana Strategy 2020-2025, which presents crowd sourcing as one of the paths we are taking to improve metadata quality on the Europeana platform. In line with European’s mission to empower the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation, we want to also consider the perspective of cultural heritage institutions, for which crowd sourcing is both a way to enrich their digital collections and engage their communities of reference.
- While crowd sourcing is generally meant as a participatory method underpinning Citizen Science, we aim to move beyond this concept and consider the role that researchers can play both as contributors to crowd sourced projects and reusers of digital resources collected or enriched in this way. As potential contributors of content, they may feel that their expertise is not adequately rewarded. As potential reusers of content, they may question its reliability.
- They welcome proposals for events that can help focus issues related to crowdsourcing and find constructive solutions to them, especially if these solutions come out from recent or ongoing experiences. More generally, the proposals must be relevant by reference to the framework defined by the EU’s strategies and programmes related to Research and Innovation. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Participatory research focusing on cultural heritage (e.g Public History)
- Data ownership, accountability and value in the context of crowdsourced research
- Re-creation / Re-contextualisation
- De-colonising of metadata
- Community generated metadata
- Post-custodial perspective
- Proposals can address the field of cultural heritage in general or focus on one of its specific sectors (such as galleries, libraries, archives, or museums). They can also focus on challenges and opportunities for specific academic disciplines that use digital cultural heritage as a resource for research (for instance all the disciplines within the humanities, such as archaeology, history, linguistics, history of art and architecture).
Funding Information
- The Research Grants Programme benefits from the total amount of EUR 25,000 per year.
- This year, EUR 21,000 is allocated to in-person events and EUR 4,000 to special prizes.
2021 Special Prizes
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven the value of digital transformation. Digital events have quickly replaced in-person ones, whenever possible. Universities have adapted their courses into online classes. In line with Europeana’s mission to develop expertise, tools and policies to embrace digital change, we want to award special prizes (EUR 2,000) to two cultural heritage professionals, professors or researchers willing to make video tutorials between October 2021 and March 2022. Prize recipients can also work in equipe and will be asked to send an offer of up to EUR 2,000 for a tutorial of three hours minimum, also distributed over a number of videos/units
SCOPE
- Applicants are invited to submit proposals that
- address challenges and opportunities related to the reuse of digital cultural heritage in research;
- help build up the digital capabilities of cultural heritage professionals involved in cross-sectoral projects;
- encourage collaborations between the cultural heritage and the research sectors.
- The Europeana Research Grants Programme is made possible by the European Commission’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Programme. The grants are intended for planning and organising:
- Conferences
- Workshops
- Series of seminars
- Summer/Autumn/Winter/Spring schools
- Training activities
- In response to the COVID-19 outbreak and the digital shift it has imposed on Academia and Research, part of the annual budget will be allocated to special prizes
Eligibility Criteria
- The Research Grants Programme is intended for cultural heritage and/or research institutions, comprising universities and foundations.
- In line with the CEF Telecom call for proposals 2020 about Europeana, this call is open to institutions based in one of the European Union’s member states, or in Iceland, Norway, and the UK.
- In case the proposal foresees the participation of more institutions, the institution in charge of the event must be based in one of the above mentioned countries.
- Please note that Europeana DSI-4 project partners are NOT eligible for this call.
For more information, visit https://pro.europeana.eu/post/europeana-research-grants-the-2021-call-is-out
