October 29, Vienna

PHAIDRAcon

Connecting Digital Knowledge with Real Lives

PHAIDRAcon 2026 Shortcuts

Explore the Digital Future for Academia and Cultural Heritage

Where Knowledge, Infrastructure and Society Meet

PHAIDRAcon is the annual gathering of the PHAIDRA community. It is a place where researchers and academics meet data stewards, curators and creatives; where librarians and developers meet with institutional leaders and policy makers.

Above all, it is a space where thinkers from across the fields of academia and cultural heritage come to explore how digital technology can bring research, curation and learning to life in new and exciting ways.

Are you a repository manager? An IT professional? Someone in a leadership position looking for the right repository solution for your organization? Or are you simply someone who is interested in research data management, open access and open source and would like to exchange ideas with like-minded individuals? Then you've come to the right place!

Why PHAIDRAcon?

Because in the digital realm, “long term” is not about a specific technology: it is about community, shared need and vision.

We believe that a successful repository solution cannot evolve in isolation. They grow through open dialogue: between institutions, disciplines and individuals, and across borders and cultures.

Each year, PHAIDRAcon brings together diverse perspectives to explore the latest developments and innovative thinking around digital preservation, curation, archival, scholarly communication, open education and academia.

PHAIDRAcon 2026: Why Data Sovereignty Alone is not Enough

Barbara Prainsack and colleagues have been influential in developing Data Solidarity as a way forward. The framework shifts attention to the context and purpose of data use, and to the power dynamics surrounding it. What makes her approach so compelling is that solidarity is not treated as a vague moral appeal, but instead it becomes a practical principle for designing data infrastructures, health-data spaces, and data governance that serve people.

On Digital Sovereignty

True digital sovereignty is not just about platforms. It is about the primacy of data. Software will change. Infrastructure will change. Our responsibility is to ensure the data remains accessible, interpretable and reusable.

Raman Ganguly, Vienna University Computer Center
On Connecting Scholar and Citizen

Repositories are no longer simply archives. They are active agents of social impact; spaces where universities meet society, and where knowledge becomes a shared civic responsibility.

adapted from Gianluca Drago, Library of the University of Padua
On Third Mission

PHAIDRA has proven to be a very powerful tool for […] third mission activities. It serves as a gateway from scholars, citizens, publishers, and multimedia [...] centers who use it [...] for academic studies, exhibitions, publications [...]

Roberta Monetti, archivist at CASREC
Third Mission Strategy Using PHAIDRA for Historical Dissemination