Background

With the intention of creating a strong international voice for humanities within the European Research Area, the European Network of Research Councils in the Humanities (ERCH) was launched in October 2002 by an association of European research councils. The objective was to bring together a large group of national research councils across Europe in order to coordinate research activities.

During 2003 three associates of the ERCH (from The Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark) successfully submitted an ERA-NET Specific Support Action (SSA) proposal to the European Commission. The aim of this preliminary project was to prepare the ground for a full-scale ERA-NET proposal.

Subsequently, the ERCH network and the European Science Foundation joined forces and decided to continue the efforts under a new name: Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA).

The proposal for the HERA ERA-NET embracing 13 national partners and the European Science Foundation achieved support by the European Commission and 1^st of March 2005 the HERA project was officially launched. June 10 2005, a Kick-off meeting was held bringing all partners together in order to prepare the project work plan.