Via the PHOTHEREL project four partners combine their experience:

The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) is the co-ordinator of PHOTHEREL. Together with the Maerlant Centre, the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography and Visual Studies is involved in the project :

The Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography and Visual Studies was founded in 2004. The centre derives its name from the pioneer of photography industry in Flanders and aims at studying the art of photography in a broad interdisciplinary and international field.

The Maerlant Centre, founded in 1999, develops websites and software applications in the cultural and culture-historical field. Because of its involvement and leading role in a numerous projects, the centre has plenty of expertise at its disposal in the field of e-learning and digitisation.

In the PHOTHEREL project the two centres combine their knowledge and know-how to contribute, together with the other partners, to the area of conservation and dissemination of photographic heritage.

The Museum for Photography in Antwerp (Belgium) was founded in the 1980’s and has a photograph collection of approximately 50.000 registered photographic objects and a technology collection of about 8.000 cameras and pieces of equipment.

Since March 2003 the museum is building up a conservation studio and is working on several conservation projects. Through these projects, the museum wants to look from different angles at the extremely diverse and complex challenges and problems that accompany analogue and digital conservation (and restoration) of photographic materials.

The Museum for photography functions according to the international ICOM definition of a Museum: " A museum is a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment. (...)"

As a project, Photherel covers more than one aspect of this definition. It approaches conservation in yet another way than other projects and shows again a different way to look upon in the dissemination and conservation of photographic heritage.

The university of Toulouse-Le Mirail has a long tradition of humanism and interdisciplinarity. In 1984 the current structure of the university was established : nowadays it consists of  three different units for education and Research. Since that date the number of students has almost doubled: there were 14000 students in 1984, today approximately 27000 students are inrolled in the university. On the one hand the university of Toulouse wishes to keep its old traditions alive, on the other hand it resolutely chooses for the future by offering new contents and building new courses.

The Service de la Formation Continue (SFC, service for life long learning)of the University aims at building bridges between academic knowledge and the professional world. In 2002 5000 trainees followed a conference, a course or a workshop at the SFC. All the disciplines that are being practised in the university are represented in the SFC. The SFC ecucates and advices all professionals that want to improve themselves, to acquire new competences or qualifications, or even to (re)start higher education.

• Center of Excellence for the Study of the Image (CESI) of the University of Bucharest

The Center of Excellence in the Study of Image (CESI) of the University of Bucharest-Romania is the first post-universitary research center from Romania in the field of socio-humanist sciences that was granted the Excellence title by the Romanian National Council of Scientific Research for Higher Education (CNCSIS) in 2001.

CESI is also part of a Consortium established by The University of Bucharest (UB) and the “Ion Mincu” University Of Architecture and Urbanism (IAUIM) from Bucharest in 2005.

The Center is designed on an interdisciplinary basis and it functions at the confluence of image research in the following domains: philosophy, history, semiotics, art and literature theory,architecture and visual communication theory.

CESI follows a research plan that spans on two main temporal dimensions – annual and long term – which includes national and international research programs and projects, individual or group-based, from the members of the Center or its collaborators. Some of the research projects have been finalized with published books (financed by printing houses, sponsorships, co-finances or by grants from The World Bank or CNCSIS).

Another dimension of activity aims the creation, organization and coordination of a didactic module:

• from 2001 CESI organizes a two year interdisciplinary masters program - “The Theory and Practice of the Image”
• from October 2005, within the Consortium between UB and UAUIM, CESI also organizes the “Space, Image, Text, Territory” (SITT) doctoral school together with the School For Advanced Studies from UAUIM.