HERA – Humanities in the European Research Area -
HERA is a partnership between 21 Humanities Research Councils across Europe and the European Science Foundation (ESF), with the objective of firmly establishing the humanities in the European Research Area and in the European Commission Framework Programmes.
In 2009, HERA launched its first Joint Research Programme (HERA JRP) with a total budget of €16.4 M. HERA JRP pools national and European funding to fund 19 transnational humanities research projects under two research themes “Cultural Dynamics: Inheritance and Identity” and “Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation”.
In 2012, HERA launched its second Joint Research Programme (HERA JRP) with a total budget of €18M under the theme "Cultural Encounters".
The European Science Foundation (ESF) acts as the Handling Agency for the two HERA Joint Research Programmes, managing the call and the selection process on behalf of the HERA JRP partners. In the preparation phase, ESF was responsible for designing the procedures for the programmes and also managed the HERA JRP post-selection phase (negotiations, contracting, monitoring, etc.). The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) acts as the coordinator of the ERA-NET Plus contract with the European Commission, which provides top-up funding for the two JRPs.
