IPERION HS: A unique European Research Infrastructure on Heritage Science

IPERION HS is a consortium of 24 partners from 23 countries that contributes to establishing a pan-European research infrastructure on heritage science. It offers training and access to a wide range of high-level scientific instruments, methodologies, data and tools for advancing knowledge and innovation in heritage science.

IPERION HS offers free-of-charge access to more than 100 state-of-art scientific techniques and 14 archives, distributed in 16 countries. Single or multi-technique proposals are to be addressed to one of the three advanced transnational platforms ARCHLAB, FIXLAB and MOLAB. IPERION HS selects the best proposals and covers the costs of this activity.

IPERION HS Partners are clustered around their national nodes and includes the Member States, Associated countries and extra-European countries (US, Mexico and Brazil). IPERION HS integrates major centres of research in heritage science, outstanding research institutes, prestigious research laboratories and conservation centres in heritage institutions and universities. Further information can be found at https://www.iperionhs.eu/about/

To date, most users have been researchers in heritage science; a drive is currently under way to engage researchers from other important fields in the multi-disciplinary area of heritage, including conservators, who can consider the utilization of this infrastructure to study problems associated with an object, series of objects or entire collections, making comparative studies with similar ones held by other entities, identify and characterize a particular deterioration phenomenon and compare with similar situations elsewhere. This information could possibly then be seminal to identify the best possible treatment when this is needed.

Further information on this outreach to the conservation community can be found below: