READ-COOP SCE is the cooperative society that owns and develops Transkribus, the European platform for handwritten and printed text recognition. The cooperative model — a Societas Cooperativa Europaea with university, archive, and individual members across Europe — was a deliberate choice in 2019: rather than spinning the platform out as a commercial company or allowing it to lapse with the end of EU project funding, the consortium chose to convert it into a member-owned cooperative.
I was elected Volunteer Director (“Community Director”) in 2023 and have served as Chair of the Board since May 2025. The work is partly governance, partly community-building, partly institutional advocacy: the case for cooperatively-owned infrastructure in the cultural-heritage and digital-humanities space is one I make publicly, in writing (the 2025 Open Research Europe paper with Melissa Terras and others) and in conference contributions across Europe and the UK.