FONDAZIONE PER LE SCIENZE RELIGIOSE GIOVANNI XXIII

Their core work

FSCIRE is a Bologna-based research foundation specializing in religious studies, with deep expertise in building research infrastructures for the humanities. They work to make archives, libraries, and scholarly resources in religious studies accessible across Europe through digital tools and networked research centers. Their H2020 work focused on creating shared infrastructure — both physical and digital — so that scholars across disciplines and countries can access primary sources and collaborate on religious and cultural heritage research.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

FSCIRE's H2020 involvement is concentrated in a short window (2018–2022), so evolution is modest. Their earliest project (ReIReS, 2018) focused on establishing the foundational research infrastructure for religious studies. By 2019, they expanded into open science and FAIR data through SSHOC while simultaneously scaling their own infrastructure via RESILIENCE, suggesting a shift from building closed disciplinary tools toward integrating with broader European open research ecosystems.

FSCIRE is moving from discipline-specific infrastructure toward interoperability with pan-European open science platforms like EOSC, making them increasingly relevant for cross-disciplinary digital humanities collaborations.

How they like to work

FSCIRE predominantly leads — they coordinated 2 of their 3 H2020 projects, indicating confidence and capacity to manage EU-funded consortia. Despite only 3 projects, they built a network of 64 unique partners across 21 countries, which is a remarkably broad reach for a small specialized foundation. This suggests they function as a connector hub in the religious studies and humanities infrastructure community, capable of assembling large, diverse consortia.

With 64 unique consortium partners spanning 21 countries from just 3 projects, FSCIRE has built an unusually wide European network for its size. Their reach is pan-European, reflecting the distributed nature of religious studies archives and scholarly communities across the continent.

What sets them apart

FSCIRE occupies a rare niche: they are one of very few organizations building dedicated EU-level research infrastructure specifically for religious studies. This makes them an essential partner for any consortium that needs humanities expertise, access to religious and cultural heritage archives, or experience integrating specialized collections into EOSC. Their ability to coordinate large consortia (64 partners, 21 countries) from a small institutional base demonstrates strong project management capacity relative to their size.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ReIReS
  Their first coordinated infrastructure project (EUR 426,000), establishing the foundational Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies across Europe.
• SSHOC
  A major multi-partner initiative building the Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud, connecting FSCIRE to the broader EOSC and FAIR data ecosystem.