Huma-Num Consortiums
Thematic research communities within Huma-Num
What is a Consortium?
Huma-Num consortiums (Consortiums-HN) bring together researchers, engineers, archivists, and data specialists from French research units around shared thematic areas, defining common digital standards, methods, and practices. They submit multi-year action programmes for which they request financial support from the TGIR and commit part of their own resources. Outputs include deliverables: guides, datasets, tools, training events.
Consortiums are labelled for a four-year period, evaluated by Huma-Num’s Steering Committee and Scientific Council, and may be renewed for a second phase. A final two-year phase may be granted to consolidate lasting outcomes. Huma-Num’s statutes set a maximum of 12 active consortiums at any one time.
Depending on your discipline, one or more consortiums may be directly relevant to your research. Getting involved early connects you to a community of specialists and to resources that can structure your data management practices from the start.
🔗 Full directory: https://www.huma-num.fr/les-consortiums-hn/
🔗 Labelling procedure: https://www.huma-num.fr/procedure-labellisation/
Active Consortiums
pictorIA — Visual Corpora and Artificial Intelligence
Labelled January 2024. Dedicated to the analysis of digital visual corpora in the humanities and social sciences using AI tools (computer vision, automatic form recognition). Carried by the MSH Mondes, building on the Labex Les Passés dans le Présent. Partners include the BnF, INHA, INA, and École nationale des chartes. Produces tutorials, shared protocols, workshops, and proof-of-concept prototypes for history of art, archaeology, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines.
🔗 Carnet de recherche: https://pictoria.hypotheses.org/
✉️ Mailing list: https://listes.huma-num.fr/wws/info/pictoria-info
ARIANE — AI and Digital Scholarly Editions
Labelled January 2023. Full name: Analyses, Recherches, Intelligence Artificielle et Nouvelles Éditions numériques. Brings together text specialists (literary scholars, linguists, historians) and computer scientists to create an interdisciplinary dialogue around AI-assisted text analysis in the humanities. Contributes to Huma-Num tool and interface development. Coordinated by Sabine Loudcher (Lyon 2), Ioana Galleron (Sorbonne Nouvelle), and Fatiha Idmhand (Poitiers).
🔗 Site: https://cst-ariane.huma-num.fr/
PTM — Projets Time Machine
Labelled January 2023. Activities revolve around the concept of geohistorical reference frameworks and spatialised geohistorical data. Continues the work of the former Paris Time Machine consortium (2019–2022), extending to other geographical areas. Develops workflows, tools, and collaborative/participatory approaches for spatial humanities (history, archaeology, art history, geography). Key tools include the GEO webmapping platform, Heurist, Oronce Fine, and La Fabrique numérique du passé.
🔗 Site: https://ptm.huma-num.fr/
MASAplus — Mémoires des Archéologues et des Sites Archéologiques+
Labelled January 2023. Successor to the MASA consortium (2014–2022). Supports the archaeological community in digital best practices and open science, with a particular focus on deploying archaeological data as Linked Open Data. Groups cover archives, documentary modelling, vocabularies, spatialisation, and open data publication. Produces the Livre Blanc MASA, PGD MASA template (DMP OPIDoR), OpenTheso (thesaurus), OpenArchaeo, and ArkeOpen.
🔗 Carnet de recherche: https://masa.hypotheses.org/
DISTAM — Digital Studies of Africa, Asia and the Middle East
Labelled January 2022. Supports the digital transition of Oriental, African, and Asian studies in France, with a focus on non-Latin scripts underserved by OCR, HTR, and text mining tools. 28+ partner institutions (UMR, UMIFRE, libraries, ResEFE). Four working groups: text encoding and corpus mining, long-term description of documentary resources, enriched visual/spatial/serial data, and legal and ethical issues.
🔗 Carnet de recherche: https://distam.hypotheses.org/
CANEVAS — Corpus Vidéo pour les SHS
Labelled January 2022. Full name: Consortium pour l’ANnotation, l’analyse Et l’archive de la Vidéo Appliquées aux activités Scientifiques. Aims to instrument SSH research on video corpora: annotating, commenting, analysing, mining, sharing, and archiving. Disciplines covered: sociology, communication sciences, education sciences, history, film studies, theatre studies. Key tool: Celluloid, an application for collaborative video annotation for research and teaching.
🔗 Carnet de recherche: https://canevas.hypotheses.org/
🔗 Celluloid: https://celluloid.huma-num.fr/
MUSICA 2 — Musicology and Digital Music
Labelled January 2022. Builds on the former Musica consortium (2014–2021). Works toward interoperable, ergonomic systems for music encoding and the description of sources, elaborating ontologies to cover an expanding range of musical corpora and constructing reference frameworks. Anchored in IREMUS and other musicology units. Key projects include IREMUS portals, CMBV digital portal, Dezède, Ricercar (CESR), and medieval songs corpora.
🔗 Carnet de recherche: https://musica.hypotheses.org/
CORLI 2 — Corpus, Langues et Interactions
Labelled January 2022. Network of laboratories and researchers working on language corpora (written, spoken, multimodal). Offers data, tools, documentation, and training on the scientific use of language corpora following FAIR principles. Labelled Centre-K by CLARIN (European language infrastructure). Active projects: collaborative annotation, corpus/excerpt citation, and the Corpus Ouvert du Français. Successor to CORLI 1 (2016–2021).
A key output of the CORLI community is COCOON (COllections de COrpus Oraux Numériques), a dedicated repository for oral and multimodal corpora hosted by Huma-Num. It allows researchers to deposit, archive, and share annotated recordings (interviews, interactions, fieldwork data) with metadata adapted to oral data (speakers, languages, recording contexts), while managing the specific ethical and legal constraints of this type of material. COCOON is integrated into the CLARIN infrastructure through CORLI’s Centre-K.
🔗 Site: https://corli.huma-num.fr/fr/accueil/
🔗 COCOON: https://cocoon.huma-num.fr —
3DHN — 3D pour les Humanités Numériques
Labelled January 2024. Successor to the 3D-SHS consortium (2014–2023). Interdisciplinary network of 26+ institutions (SSH, heritage, archaeology, linguistics, computer graphics, optics) aiming to become a major national and international actor in the use, preservation, and dissemination of 3D data in research and culture. Develops workshops, recommendations, guides, and the Conservatoire national de données 3D. Free software ecosystem includes aLTAG 3D (for archiving 3D projects at CINES). Affiliated learned society: Consortium 3D : Culture, Patrimoine et Humanités Numériques.
🔗 Site and carnet: https://shs3d.hypotheses.org/
Former Consortiums
Consortiums whose labelling period has ended — some succeeded by a new consortium, others in “dernière phase” (final wrap-up). Their outputs remain available.
| Consortium | Theme | Labelled | Status | Resources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoL (Sound of Life) | Eco-acoustics, spatialised sound data, biodiversity | 2023 | Closed | consortium-sol.huma-num.fr |
| Paris Time Machine | Geohistorical data, spatial humanities (Paris focus) | 2019 | Succeeded by PTM | paris-timemachine.huma-num.fr |
| 3D-SHS | 3D data in SSH and heritage | 2014 | Succeeded by 3DHN | shs3d.hypotheses.org |
| MASA | Archaeological data, interoperability, FAIR | 2014 | Succeeded by MASAplus | masa.hypotheses.org |
| MUSICA | Digital musical data, encoding standards | 2014 | Succeeded by MUSICA 2 | musica.hypotheses.org |
| ImaGEO | Heritage cartographic and photographic collections | 2012 | Dernière phase | imageo.hypotheses.org |
| COSME | Medieval sources, digital editions | 2012 | Dernière phase | cosme.hypotheses.org |
| ArcMC | Contemporary archives (19th–20th c.) | 2012 | Closed | arcmc.hypotheses.org |
| Archipolis | Political science archives | 2012 | Closed | archipolis.hypotheses.org |
| CORLI 1 | Language corpora (oral + written) | 2016 | Succeeded by CORLI 2 | corli.huma-num.fr |
| CAHIER | Authors’ corpora (literature, philosophy) | 2011 | Closed | cahier.hypotheses.org |
| Corpus Écrits (IRCE) | Written language corpora | 2011 | Merged into CORLI | corpusecrits.huma-num.fr |
| IRCOM | Oral and multimodal corpora | 2011 | Merged into CORLI | ircom.huma-num.fr |
| Archives des ethnologues | Ethnological field archives | 2011 | Closed | — |