Strengthening Collaborative Cultural Heritage Research Across Europe
The Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage (JPICH) has launched its first transnational Call for Research Proposals in Cultural Heritage, marking a significant milestone for collaborative heritage research in Europe and beyond. This call aims to support innovative, multidisciplinary projects that enhance understanding, conservation, and sustainable use of cultural heritage in all its forms.
By bringing together research funders, heritage institutions, and academic teams across participating countries, the initiative seeks to align national strategies and foster a truly integrated research landscape. The call encourages ambitious proposals that transcend borders and disciplinary silos, creating new knowledge and practical solutions for the cultural heritage sector.
Objectives of the Transnational Call
The JPICH call is designed to address key challenges facing cultural heritage today. It emphasizes cooperation, knowledge-sharing, and the development of practical outcomes that can support both policy and practice. The main objectives include:
- Advancing innovative research: Stimulate cutting-edge, cross-border projects that produce new insights into cultural heritage, from tangible monuments to intangible traditions.
- Supporting sustainable management: Develop approaches that balance preservation with contemporary needs such as urban development, tourism, and community use.
- Promoting inclusive heritage: Highlight diverse narratives, marginalized communities, and participatory approaches that place people at the heart of heritage.
- Enhancing policy relevance: Provide evidence-based recommendations to inform national and European cultural heritage policies.
Scope: From Tangible Sites to Intangible Traditions
The call adopts a broad and integrated view of cultural heritage. It welcomes proposals covering a wide spectrum of themes, including but not limited to:
- Built and archaeological heritage: Conservation of historic buildings, archaeological sites, urban landscapes, and industrial heritage.
- Movable heritage and collections: Museums, archives, libraries, and the preservation of artworks, artifacts, and documents.
- Intangible cultural heritage: Languages, rituals, music, performing arts, crafts, and traditional knowledge systems.
- Digital heritage: Digitization, 3D documentation, digital storytelling, and the long-term preservation of digital cultural resources.
- Cultural landscapes: Interactions between people and their environments, including rural, coastal, and urban landscapes shaped by human activity.
By embracing this comprehensive scope, the JPICH call recognizes that heritage is not limited to monuments alone, but also encompasses living practices, memories, and places where culture is continuously created and reinterpreted.
Encouraging Multidisciplinary and Transnational Consortia
To unlock new perspectives, the call actively promotes collaboration between disciplines such as history, archaeology, architecture, conservation science, anthropology, sociology, digital humanities, and environmental studies. Applicants are encouraged to form consortia that bring together research institutions, universities, heritage agencies, museums, and where appropriate, non-academic partners such as creative industries or civil society organizations.
Transnational consortia must typically include teams from several participating countries, ensuring that research questions and methodologies are tested across different geographical, cultural, and legislative contexts. This approach helps generate results that are relevant and adaptable across Europe and internationally.
Key Thematic Priorities
While individual participating countries may tailor specific funding rules, the JPICH call focuses on common thematic priorities that reflect pressing needs in the cultural heritage field:
- Heritage in a changing environment: Investigating the impact of climate change, urbanization, and environmental degradation on heritage assets, and developing strategies for resilience and risk mitigation.
- Sustainable use and management: Exploring models that integrate heritage with economic development, tourism, and community well-being without compromising authenticity and integrity.
- Digital transformation of heritage: Leveraging digital tools and infrastructures for documentation, research, access, and public engagement.
- Social value and participation: Understanding how communities engage with heritage, co-create narratives, and use heritage to strengthen identity, social cohesion, and intercultural dialogue.
- Heritage governance and policy: Analysing legal frameworks, funding mechanisms, and governance models to improve coordination between stakeholders at local, national, and transnational levels.
Benefits for the Cultural Heritage Community
The launch of this first JPICH transnational call brings several benefits to the wider heritage ecosystem:
- Shared knowledge base: Joint projects create comparable data and methodologies that can be used across borders.
- Capacity building: Research teams gain experience in international cooperation, project management, and interdisciplinary methods.
- Innovation transfer: Practical tools, guidelines, and technologies can be adopted by heritage institutions, local authorities, and cultural organizations.
- Visibility and impact: Collaborative projects often achieve greater international recognition and policy influence than isolated national initiatives.
Engaging Stakeholders and the Public
The JPICH call emphasizes the importance of dialogue between researchers, professionals, decision-makers, and citizens. Successful projects are expected to design outreach and dissemination strategies that communicate results clearly and accessibly, whether through publications, workshops, exhibitions, public events, or digital platforms.
Public engagement is considered vital not only for sharing knowledge, but also for building support for heritage protection and for understanding how people value and use heritage in their daily lives. This people-centred approach aligns with broader European objectives that link culture, democratic participation, and sustainable development.
Looking Ahead: A Long-Term Vision for Cultural Heritage Research
This first transnational call is part of a longer-term vision to coordinate cultural heritage research agendas and funding schemes among participating countries. It helps pave the way for future joint calls, infrastructures, and partnerships that will continue to reinforce the sector.
By pooling resources and expertise, JPICH contributes to a more coherent, strategic, and impactful research environment. The knowledge generated through funded projects will support policymakers, professionals, and communities as they confront the complex challenges surrounding heritage protection, access, and sustainability in the decades to come.
Creating Lasting Value for Future Generations
At its core, the initiative is about safeguarding and reimagining cultural heritage for future generations. The JPICH transnational call encourages research that does not treat heritage as static, but as a dynamic resource that can inspire innovation, creativity, and social cohesion. From developing advanced conservation technologies to rethinking the role of heritage in education and local development, the funded projects will shape how societies understand and care for their shared past.
As this first call gets underway, it signals a clear commitment to collaborative, forward-looking cultural heritage research—one that acknowledges the diversity of European experiences while building a shared framework for protecting and celebrating the richness of our cultural environments.