CLARIN ERIC

Their core work

CLARIN ERIC is the European research infrastructure for language resources and technology, providing researchers across all disciplines with access to digital language data (text, speech, video) and advanced tools to process it. Based in Utrecht, they build and maintain a federated network of data repositories and web services that make language resources findable, accessible, and interoperable across Europe. Their work underpins research in social sciences, humanities, and any field that deals with multilingual text or spoken data at scale. They also serve as a bridge between language technology providers and the broader research community through the European Open Science Cloud.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In 2015–2018, CLARIN focused on strengthening its own infrastructure (CLARIN-PLUS as coordinator) and connecting with broader e-infrastructure ecosystems like EUDAT and EGI through the EOSC-hub project. From 2019 onward, the focus shifted decisively toward EOSC integration, FAIR data principles, and serving the Social Sciences and Humanities community — with SSHOC becoming their largest funded project. There is also a new thread around industry engagement (ENRIITC) that was absent in the earlier period.

CLARIN is moving from being a standalone language infrastructure toward becoming a key SSH data service provider within the European Open Science Cloud, with growing interest in industry partnerships.

How they like to work

CLARIN operates almost exclusively as a participant (9 of 10 projects), contributing specialized language infrastructure expertise to large consortia — their average consortium has around 24 partners across many countries. They coordinated only CLARIN-PLUS, which was their own infrastructure strengthening project. This profile suggests a reliable, well-connected partner that brings deep domain expertise to big infrastructure projects rather than leading them, making them easy to integrate into ambitious consortium bids.

With 235 unique consortium partners across 37 countries, CLARIN has one of the broadest collaborative networks in the research infrastructure space. Their reach spans virtually all EU member states and associated countries, reflecting their role as a pan-European ERIC.

What sets them apart

CLARIN is the only ERIC dedicated entirely to language resources and technology, giving them a unique niche at the intersection of digital infrastructure and humanities/social science research. For any consortium that needs multilingual text processing, speech data, or FAIR-compliant language resources, CLARIN is the default European partner. Their dual fluency in both technical infrastructure (EOSC, EUDAT, cloud services) and humanities research makes them a rare bridge between these communities.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SSHOC
  Largest single grant (EUR 2.07M) — positioned CLARIN as a major contributor to the Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud, their strategic pivot toward EOSC.
• CLARIN-PLUS
  Only project where CLARIN served as coordinator (EUR 979K) — directly strengthened the core CLARIN infrastructure across Europe.
• EOSC Future
  Most recent project (2021–2024), signaling CLARIN's ongoing commitment to embedding language resources within the European Open Science Cloud.