ECHOES held a focus group at the Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI) in Athens, Greece, on October 21st, 2025 as part of Work Package 3 (Enhancing Collaboration and Integration).
The session was organised and facilitated by Nikos Volyrakis, MSc candidate in Digital Methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Athens University of Economics and Business, within the framework of his master’s thesis on the ECHOES Collaborative Research Scenarios (CRS). His research is co-supervised by Agiatis Benardou, President of the DARIAH Board of Directors, and George Artopoulos, Associate Professor at The Cyprus Institute.
Work in progress at the focus group
Collaborative research scenarios include interdisciplinary work between different departments, cross-institutional projects, international partnerships, and public-private collaborations between academics and industry. These scenarios can involve a senior researcher working with early-stage researchers, a student learning a new technique at another institution, or a large, multi-country project to address a global issue.
The focus group forms part of Task 3.3 (Enhancing and Evaluating the Collaboration Potential of ECHOES), which aims to explore and assess interdisciplinary collaboration within cultural heritage institutions through participatory methods. Participants from ASKI, who consisted of historians, archivists, librarians, cultural heritage communications specialists, engaged in a hands-on discussion using the CRS framework to map everyday workflows, identify collaboration barriers, and envision how the forthcoming European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) can best support their professional practices.
Insights from the Athens session will contribute to the ECHOES Collaboration Potential Report (D3.4) and to the refinement of the CRS methodology, developed in liaison with The Cyprus Institute, Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and DARIAH ERIC.
This focus group marks a further step in ECHOES’ commitment to co-design and user-driven research, ensuring that the development of the Cultural Heritage Cloud is grounded in the real needs and collaborative dynamics of the communities it aims to serve.
