The Digital Encyclopaedia of European Sociability (DIGITENS) project will produce the first open-access digital encyclopaedia and anthology of sociability in Europe throughout the long-eighteenth century. The purpose of the DIGITENS project is to build an original framework for understanding the interactions, tensions, limits and paradoxes underlying European models of sociability and to reflect on the following question: Can the emergence and formation of European models of sociability be traced throughout the long eighteenth century (1650-1850)? Drawing upon the expertise of international members from different disciplines and national traditions, the project will create a toplevel interdisciplinary network and facilitate intersectoral communication between its academic and non-academic partners. The nine international universities will work together with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musée Cognacq-Jay in France, and The National Archives in Great Britain, allowing members to explore how understandings of sociability might be enhanced through dialogue, international collaboration, and digital technology, developing a broader contextualisation of the research into European sociability. As the first digital encyclopaedia of its kind, the expected impact of the resource will not only benefit researchers, but anyone interested in the history of European models of sociability. The project is not, however, of purely historical or academic interest. Through the implementation of outreach events, workshops and the production of the accessible digital platforms, the DIGITENS team will promote a wide investigation of the value of eighteenth century principles in twenty-first-century private and public lives throughout Europe. The interdisciplinary and international aspects of the DIGITENS project, and coherent methodology, are innovative, and the scope broad and ambitious.

The project “The Activist, the Archivist, and the Researcher: Novel Collaborative Strategies of Transnational Research, Archiving and Exhibiting Social and Political Dissent in Europe (19th-21st centuries)” (ACTIVATE) fosters inter-sectorial and interdisciplinary collaboration through the international research cooperation of 16 academic and non-academic institutions from 7 countries across Western, Central and Eastern Europe. ACTIVATE’s objective is to develop innovative methodologies and new knowledge as well as share best practice based on the principles of diversity, inclusiveness and open science between researchers, archivists, curators and public educators through a reflective approach on social and political dissent in a long-term and comparative perspective. By focusing on the transnational circulation of people, ideas, discourse, practice and archives, ACTIVATE aims first to contribute to a new narrative on European protest and its relations with non-European spaces. Secondly, the project engages reflective archival, research and exhibiting practices to explore the role and impact of archives on different space and time scales, approaching them as an ecosystem of active agents of memory and change. Through secondments and networking, ACTIVATE partners will share their expertise and best practice on material, audiovisual and born-digital documents and data. They will organise thematic seminars, workshops, training and public programmes to increase institutional outreach that will serve as a model for future endeavours, ensuring cooperative relationships and impact on the wider community beyond the life of the project. ACTIVATE strives for new synergies between academic research and heritage institutions, fostering better knowledge, integration and promotion of dispersed cultural heritage, which European democracies need to preserve with care.