Background

Research Infrastructures

Research Infrastructures (RIs) play a crucial role in strengthening Europe’s capacity to produce, integrate and share high-quality knowledge across borders. By providing coordinated services, interoperable tools, access to distributed resources and long-term sustainability frameworks, RIs enhance the competitiveness, impact and societal relevance of European research within the European Research Area.

Progress

RESILIENCE – the European Research Infrastructure for the study of religion – has progressively established itself within this strategic landscape. Building on a growing European network of partners and services, RESILIENCE integrates data, archives, digital tools and scholarly expertise across countries and disciplines. As it continues to expand its membership, refine its services and consolidate its governance model, RESILIENCE is emerging as a reference point for research on religion at the European level.

Supporting Researchers

By supporting researchers in the humanities and social sciences through transnational access, digital services, methodological innovation and community building, RESILIENCE contributes to overcoming fragmentation in the field and fostering long-term sustainability. At the same time, it promotes cooperation with technological partners and contributes to the development of standards, interoperability solutions and sustainable research ecosystems.

Unique Characteristics

The field of research on religion has unique characteristics that do not occur (to this extent) in any other field of research. These include:

• The reference of all religions to the numinous, i.e. the presumption of the divine or sacred as a higher and supernatural power outside the worldly sphere. This always remains in the background of all research on religion, despite all strictly scientific treatment.
• The variety of languages and scripts in which the sources are transmitted, including oral and visual traditions.
• The diversity of sources, which include not only texts, but also material (artefacts, architecture, etc.) and immaterial (rites, music, etc.) evidence.
• The difficulty in accessing these diverse sources, often located in religious sites, restricted archives, secluded monuments or other hidden places, and reachable only through personal contacts and networks.
• The integration into complex and often contradictory religious, political and economic discourses that have an effect in synchrony and diachrony.

ESFRI Roadmap

Acknowledging such a specificity, the ESFRI Roadmap in 2018 (p. 115) stated that « Religious studies have become very relevant not only for researchers, but also social actors and decision makers since positive knowledge on religions is a prerequisite to develop informed dialogue and effective policy in the evolving multicultural society. The economic and demographic crisis affecting Europe, as well as the concurrent immigration from other parts of the world, destabilizes the perception of the European society also in terms of an evolving religious landscape. New forms of orthodoxy appear and social discontent and radicalism are expressed frequently in religious terms which is also a threat to social cohesion in the EU. At the same time, religion has played a central role in social integration throughout the history of humankind and it is important to understand its evolution in a changing European society».

The inclusion of RESILIENCE in the ESFRI Roadmap 2021 demonstrates that RESILIENCE represents an added value in the strengthening and structuring of the European Research Area (ERA) and a significant improvement in the relevant scientific and technological fields at international level.

Back to About page