From disparate disciplines to unity in diversity. How the PARTHENOS project brings Humanities Research Infrastructures together

Since the first ESFRI roadmap in 2006, multiple Humanities Research Infrastructures (RIs) have seen the light of day. At a disciplinary level, they have supported archaeologists (ARIADNE), linguists (CLARIN-ERIC), Holocaust researchers (EHRI), cultural heritage specialist (IPERION-CH) and others. These are a few examples to scratch the surface of the breadth of research communities which have benefited from large-scale European collaborative projects.
While RIs in each field have developed discipline-specific services over the years, common themes can also be distinguished. All Humanities RIs address, in varying degrees, questions around research data management, the use of standards and the desired interoperability of their data sets across disciplinary boundaries.
This paper sheds light on how a cluster project developed pooled services and shared solutions for its audience of humanities researchers, RI managers and policy makers. In a time where the convergence of existing infrastructure is becoming ever more important – with the construction of a European Open Science Cloud as an audacious, ultimate goal – we hope that our experiences inform future work and provide inspiration on how to exploit synergies in interdisciplinary, transnational, scientific cooperation.