As part of the international meeting “European Research Infrastructures for Heritage Science” held in Florence from June 30 to July 3, in the enchanting location of the “Salone dei Dugento” in “Palazzo Vecchio”, PARTHENOS was officially inaugurated.
On Friday, 3rd of July PARTHENOS was presented by the scientific coordinator Franco Niccolucci (PIN Vast-Lab) as a kind of “spending review” which optimize the resources allocated to research in the Humanities. In this case “spending review” does not mean “cuts” but smart investments and targeted to the research sector.
Maria Theofilatou addressing the consortium during the Kick Off meeting in Florence
Maria Theofilatou – representing the European Commission as PARTHENOS Scientific Officer – underlined that the objectives of the fund Horizon 2020 are not only to encourage and finance individual projects, but to promote the creation of a permanent Research Infrastructure in the field of Cultural Heritage and Humanities. In this terms, the participation in PARTHENOS of CLARIN and DARIAH, the two ERICs (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) participating PARTHENOS in PARTHENOS – therefore has a significant role.
The general coordinator of CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) Sebastian Drude explained that “one of the goal of PARTHENOS is to organize the knowledge already existing out there and find real communities’ needs”. Also DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) will contribute in PARTHENOS increasing the sustainability of the outcomes digital research projects through the exchange and integration of data in a common e-infrastructure.
Besides the two ERICs, PARTHENOS kick off was backed by the commitment of four European projects, which proved the ambition of PARTHENOS vision. ARIADNE (Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe), CENDARI (Collaborative European Digital Archive Infrastructure), EHRI (European Holocaust Research Infrastructure) and IPERION CH (Integrated Platform for the European Research Infrastructure ON Culture Heritage) supported from their respective perspectives PARTHENOS mission.
The kick off was also the chance for members of the consortium to introduce specific themes and topics addressed by each of the eight PARTHENOS’ work packages. From the various presentations emerged the importance of focusing attention on the standardization of data, training and professional development for researchers, and the crucial role of the dissemination and communication to the general public, as stressed by Reto Speck, the coordinator of PARTHENOS’ communication activities.
The kick off, which was part of the larger event “European Research Infrastructures for Heritage Science”, was preceded by a full day of working groups, in which the strategical guidelines and operational organization of the project were discussed vis-a-vis by the members of the consortium.