This document discusses the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) network and its upcoming joint research programme called "Uses of the Past". HERA is a network of national humanities research councils across Europe that coordinates research policies, establishes joint research programmes, evaluates the impact of humanities research, and promotes humanities. The upcoming "Uses of the Past" programme will fund projects exploring how the past is used, both constructively and contentiously, with a focus on identity, norms/values, media/culture, transnational dynamics, and informing current issues. It encourages interdisciplinary, international collaboration with non-academic partners to address these themes in new ways.

1. ‘Uses of the Past’
Joint Research Programme
Mark Llewellyn
AHRC Director of Research
and Chair of HERA Knowledge Exchange Strategy Group
UK Information Session
London 4th
February 2015

2. Why HERA?
Humanities research matters!
Culture matters!

3. What is HERA?
• A partnership among Humanities research councils
across Europe (currently 25 partners, including the
European Science Foundation)
• Functions as a Network and have joint calls between
some partners
"Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) is a
network of national funding agencies and the European
Science Foundation (ESF) committed to leading and
developing funding opportunities for humanities
researchers in Europe, and sharing excellence in
research management practices and outcomes."

4. HERA is dedicated to:
• the coordination of national research policies;
• the establishment of new Joint Research Programmes
(JRPs);
• defining methods for evaluating the impact of
humanities research;
• playing a pro-active role in promoting humanities on the
European platform;
• functioning as a broker for multilateral funding
arrangements.

5. Previous Joint Research
Programmes
• HERA with the European Commission have invested 34
Million Euros in project funding
• Funded 37 Projects (UK leading 20 projects and involved
in 15 others)
• First HERA funding call launched in 2009
• It had 2 thematic areas ‘Cultural Dynamics’ and
‘Creativity & Innovation’
• Second HERA call launched February 2012
• One thematic area ‘Cultural Encounters’

6. HERA is growing……
• 1st
call – 13 Countries
• 2nd
Call – 18 Countries
• Uses of the Past – 23 Countries
new countries are Italy, Spain, Switzerland,
Latvia and the Czech Republic

7. Aims of ‘Uses of the Past’
• Achieving a better understanding of the multiple and
contradictory ways in which the past has been used,
both contentiously and constructively.
• Enable us to see more clearly the complex ways in
which our cultural diversity has been formed, and the
dynamics by which it may be shaped and directed in the
future.
• Call text lists possible themes and questions to be
addressed by ‘Uses of the Past’ projects
• Not prescriptive or exhaustive, only a set of suggestions

8. Uses of the Past focus areas
• Changing uses of (different) pasts?
How is historical knowledge created, defined and validated? What constitutes “misuse”
of the past? What are the dynamics and consequences of competing narratives of
the past?
• Uses of the past for identity construction and institutional embedding of
norms and values.
How does the use of the past construct identities at individual and collective
levels? How are norms, values, institutions and behaviours formed by
the conscious and unconscious uses of the past?
• Uses of the past in media, material culture and public space.
What are the material forms of historical knowledge? How are the material
forms and media of historical knowledge related to their use? What is
the meaning and (economic) use of heritage? How does the past
materialize in objects (e.g. art or commodities) and spaces?

9. Uses of the past focus areas
• Uses of the past: transnational/international/national and regional dimensions,
including globalization
What are the relations between European and global memories and histories? What
are the relations between European and regional memories and histories? How do
uses of the past have impact on the role of Europe as a (global) actor? What are
the transnational or transregional dynamics of historical memory?
• Uses of the past: impact on solving current problems, decision making and future
policies.
What is the role of knowledge of the past within a ”knowledge society"? Can new
knowledge of the past be used for building trust and solidarity in an integrated
Europe? In what ways is knowledge of the past a source for contemporary creativity
and innovation? In what ways may this knowledge illuminate the nature and effects
of these processes (solving current problems, decision making and future policies)?

10. Think about:
• Collaboration
Collaboration should give a particular added value to questions
of how the past can be used to consider the present and future.
Addressing familiar questions in new ways impossible for an
individual researcher.
• Interdisciplinarity
Not a requirement or a doctrine, but an ambition to challenge
the familiar and the conventional and a feature of successful
projects. Interdisciplinarity rather than simple ‘multi-
disciplinarity’. Not just combining the insights of disciplines, but
reaching insights which move the boundaries of the disciplines.

11. Think about:
• Internationalisation
A requirement. Like interdisciplinarity, research across national
boundaries should have the capacity to unfix the assumptions
which form the vision-limits and comfort-zones of specific
traditions and identities.
• European added value
Why will this multi-national research and partnership make a
difference? Why is it something that can’t simply be done with
local or national funding? Also: this criterion not about
“European” topics, but about the better research made possible
though collaboration among researchers based in Europe.

12. Think about:
• Knowledge Exchange
How can your research process and/or results be linked and
disseminated to wider world outside the academy? Possibility
for mutually-enriching collaboration with non-academic
partners. Expected this will .be part of proposals