The Africa Multiple Interactive Research Atlas (AMIRA) is the research-data platform of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth. It is built and maintained by the Digital Research Environment (DRE), the Cluster’s digital infrastructure unit. At the DRE, we design the data systems that connect researchers across the Africa Multiple Research Centres (AMRCs) and partner institutions worldwide. Our work spans research data management, knowledge graph development, AI-assisted data processing, and digital literacy, all grounded in the FAIR and CARE principles and a commitment to multiple knowledge systems.
AMIRA is a catalogue. It describes the recordings, photographs, documents, and artworks that the Cluster’s research projects work with, and shows where each item is kept. In almost all cases, the material itself is held elsewhere, by the researchers or by the archives, museums, and libraries that look after it. To request material, contact the research project rather than the institution that keeps it: every record names who to ask. How to request access
Two principles guide our work. First, curation and description are joint efforts with our partners at the AMRCs, hosted by University Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Rhodes University, the University of Lagos, and Moi University. Each centre describes the data it knows best, and the DRE runs the shared infrastructure that connects them. Second, storage stays distributed: data remains in its local repository, while AMIRA holds the descriptions that point to it. Research data becomes findable without being moved.
The AMRCs and partner institutions hold substantial research collections and datasets. The DRE team works with each centre to assess the scope, nature, quality, and size of these holdings, and to decide what can be linked to the platform. High-quality metadata, the descriptions that make data findable, makes researchers’ data easier to discover and their work more visible to a wider community of peers. All this metadata comes together in AMIRA, built on Omeka S, which makes the collections of the AMRCs and their partners searchable from one place.
From a single search bar, you can move across research items, the Cluster’s publications and podcasts, projects, the people and organisations behind them, and the places, languages, and subjects that connect them. Each of these collections has its own filters for narrowing a search. Every record opens onto the people, projects, and themes around it, and interactive maps, timelines, and network graphs make the metadata easy to read at a glance. AMIRA is open to all, and no account is needed to explore it.
AMIRA focuses on the Cluster’s research data. For news, events, and general information about the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, visit the main website at africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de.
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