Who We Work With
Meet the Consortium
Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) coordinates the ARXIVE project, providing strategic leadership and ensuring high-impact outcomes. LUH leads Work Package 8 on project coordination and Work Package 6 on the Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP) programme, capacity building, and the Digital Innovation Toolkit. With extensive experience in EU and international projects, LUH drives semantic integration of digital heritage data, ensuring compliance with EU standards and alignment with the European Common Cultural Heritage Cloud (ECCCH) and ECHOES. LUH actively engages stakeholders across Europe, offering hands-on adoption of ARXIVE tools, workshops, and case studies to support GLAM institutions. It develops a practical toolkit, integrating digital workflows, data management guidance, and interoperability standards like CIDOC-CRM and FAIR principles. LUH also leads the Data Management Plan, ensuring project data is curated, preserved, and accessible in line with EU standards.
Through stakeholder engagement, advisory boards, and policy labs, LUH fosters socio-economic and digital advancement, ensuring ARXIVE’s solutions are transferable and sustainable. By combining coordination, tool development, and collaboration, LUH reinforces Europe’s digital cultural heritage ecosystem and drives lasting innovation.
Work packages:
WP6 FSTP, Capacity Building, Workshops, and Digital Innovation Toolkit
WP8 Coordination and project management
Founded in 1983, the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) is Greece’s largest research center, renowned for its research excellence and innovation.
In ARXIVE, FORTH contributes a methodology for authoring semantic and multimedia representations of historical narratives, vocational processes, and cultural practices. This event-based approach links dates, locations, actors, and objects to digital assets, enabling knowledge reuse across contexts, languages, and audiences. FORTH also extends its ontology to support annotated bibliographies as narrative structures and enhances it for multi-user collaborative authoring, ensuring alignment with ARXIVE’s goals of interoperability, semantic richness, and sustainable knowledge reuse.
Work packages:
WP2 Annotated bibliography tools design and development
The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) is a leading German research institution within the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, focusing on digital transformation across society, industry, and public sectors. With a team of 400 experts from diverse fields such as computer science, social sciences, and engineering, Fraunhofer FIT combines technical excellence with a deep understanding of human and organizational needs.
Within ARXIVE, Fraunhofer FIT focuses on integrating and extending cultural heritage knowledge infrastructures. This includes adapting ontologies like CIDOC CRM for structured documentation and implementing FAIR data management principles for both real-time and offline use. Fraunhofer FIT also contributes AI-assisted features that improve data quality and user experience, including machine-learning-based content suggestions, automated quality checks, and an AI-powered chatbot tutor for guidance and support. Leveraging its experience from projects like ARGUS and Germany’s Cultural Data Space, Fraunhofer FIT ensures ARXIVE’s seamless interoperability with the ECHOES platform and the broader European digital heritage infrastructure.
Work packages:
WP3 CHO authoring tools design and development
Open Knowledge Foundation Greece (OKFGR), established in 2013, is the Greek chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation International. Founded by professors, developers, and citizens, it is supported by volunteers with expertise in fields like Computer Science, Medicine, and Journalism. OKFGR promotes Open Data, Open Knowledge, and Open Science across various scientific disciplines. In ARXIVE, OKFN Greece will fulfill the following roles: civil society representation, research performer, technology developer, and education and training provider.
Work packages:
WP4 Integration and deployment with ECCCH and other platforms
INOVA+ is a leading innovation consulting company with a vast experience helping organizations across diverse sectors develop innovative projects. In ARXIVE, INOVA+ is responsible for several critical roles, such as: 1) Use-Case Pilots Implementation and Training Materials: INOVA+ will lead efforts to test and validate developed tools in real-world use-case pilots, ensuring their effectiveness and practicality. Additionally, tailored capacity-building initiatives will empower stakeholders, equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to sustain and implement project tools and methodologies effectively; 2) Dissemination, Communication, Exploitation, and Sustainability: INOVA+ will design and implement an efficient communication strategy to maximize visibility and impact, raising awareness about the project’s goals and outcomes among key stakeholders, including academia, the cultural sector, and practitioners. INOVA and partners will also facilitate synergies with other ECCCH projects and initiatives, ensuring the long-term sustainability of project results through the development of sustainable business models and providing concrete policy recommendations to local, regional, and national policymakers to foster the adoption of innovations.
Work packages:
WP5 Use-Case Pilots Testing and Training Materials
WP7 Dissemination, Communication, Exploitation, Sustainability
Eurecat is the leading Technology Centre in Catalonia and the second largest private research organization in Southern Europe. Eurecat’s R&D activities cover a broad range of fields, including Industrial Technologies (materials, manufacturing, robotics, sustainability), Digital Technologies (Data Science, AI, IT Security, e-health), Biotech (Omics, Nutrition), and Sustainability (water, energy, environmental impact). In ARXIVE, EURECAT contributes expertise across three research lines: Computational Social Science is applied to analyse user interaction with the developed tools, ensuring usability and effectiveness, and to assess potential bias in the tools, their usage patterns, and the resulting content. Trustworthy AI activities focus on ontology extension and alignment to ensure semantic interoperability. Advanced Machine Learning supports the development of a chatbot-based tutor through Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems.
The National Library of Greece (NLG), founded in 1829 by Ioannis Kapodistrias, is the par excellence depository and trustee for Greece’s cultural heritage. Its mission is to perpetually trace, collect, organise, document, preserve and safeguard scientific and cultural documents, created in Greece or internationally and related to Hellenism in its diachronic evolution and perception by other cultures. As well as ensuring open and equal access to any interested party, driven by freedom of knowledge, information and research. In ARXIVE, The National Library of Greece (NLG) contributes to ARXIVE as a leading cultural heritage institution, offering expertise in managing, preserving, and disseminating cultural heritage objects (CHOs). With advanced digitization and preservation facilities, NLG plays a key role in defining metadata standards, testing bibliographic tools, and ensuring international alignment. It contributes to the development of tools for annotated bibliographies and archival documentation, balancing professional standards with innovations to improve efficiency and accessibility.
NLG also coordinates the Greek Libraries Network and provides specialized training in digitization and conservation. Its involvement in international organizations, including IFLA and ICCROM, enhances its role in standardization and interoperability. Within ARXIVE, NLG serves as a pilot for testing tools, leveraging its expertise in manuscripts, rare books, conservation, and cataloguing to ensure high-quality bibliographic descriptions, preservation workflows, and repository development.
Museums and Monuments of Portugal (MMP) is a national public entity responsible for managing Portugal’s network of museums, monuments, palaces, and heritage sites. Committed to public service, sustainability, and innovation, MMP focuses on preserving, researching, documenting, and ensuring public access to cultural heritage. MMP oversees 37 museums, 4 national palaces, 39 national properties, 16 national museums, 6 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the State Contemporary Art Collection.
Within ARXIVE, MMP acts as a domain expert, pilot partner, and validation hub, contributing real use cases, datasets, and institutional procedures. Through pilot testing in an authentic museum environment, MMP evaluates interoperability, usability, metadata quality, workflow integration, authorship and access rights, and responsible data governance. By grounding ARXIVE in expert-led museum practice, MMP helps ensure that project outcomes are credible, sustainable, and adoptable across Europe.
VILABS OE is an interdisciplinary SME focused on providing research, innovation, and management services for societal and business impact. It offers a range of services, including project management, innovation support, software R&D, policy design, and capacity building.
In ARXIVE, VILABS OE leads WP1, establishing local stakeholder “hubs” in five countries to gather fieldwork requirements and co-design digital tools. They ensure inclusivity and compliance by developing ARXIVE’s ethical research framework and managing Gender, Ethical, Legal, and Social Accountability (GELSCAC). VILABS OE also drives ARXIVE’s sustainability strategy, creating business plans for long-term adoption, and oversees the evaluation and impact assessment of project pilots to measure their effectiveness in the cultural heritage sector.
External Advisory Board
The role of the External Advisory Board (EAB) is to offer strategic counsel and feedback on project initiatives. The EAB primarily aims at discerning European priorities and addressing current challenges, along with fostering connections between our project and other strategic initiatives. Moreover, the EAB supports the ARXIVE Consortium to engage with additional interested stakeholders during the project execution.
Dr. Laura Castro
Assistant Professor, School of Arts, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa
Prof. Yannis Kokkonas
Historical Biography
Prof. Giovanna Fossati
Professor Media Heritage, Utrecht University