This panel is organized by the Research Infrastructure RESILIENCE The concept of FAIR data, data that meet the principles of being Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, is with increasing speed being introduced into various research domains, including Religious Studies. The first presentation of the session will give more insight into the FAIR principles, how they connect to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and funder expectations (including Data Management Plans), and how the RESILIENCE Research Infrastructure assists researchers in both consuming and creating FAIR data. The second presentation will zoom in on a concrete research case from religious studies dealing with rare languages and related datasets of digital sources and objects. The presentation will highlight the importance of a Data Management Plan (DMP) for active research data management throughout every step of the research life cycle and will demonstrate how FAIR data publication and the usage of persistent identifiers such as unique researcher IDs (ORCID) and Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) can advance research in Religious Studies and impact your research career. The third presentation will zoom out to focus on the field of digital religion as a whole and to argue for the necessity of building a research infrastructure for religious studies. The growing relevance and urgency of more in-depth and nuanced research into religion as a social and political reality will be examined, together with the challenges currently facing the field on the national, European, and global levels. Joining forces in supporting data-driven research on religion is crucial, both on a local and international level: in light of this development of the field, building out a research infrastructure appears to be a necessity. Chair: Karla Boersma (Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn) Speakers:Roxanne Wyns (KU Leuven, LIBIS), FAIR data in Religious Studies in the context of the EOSC Federico Alpi (FSCIRE), The impact of good research data management on Religious Studies and your research career Lieneke Timpers (KU Leuven), Why we need a research infrastructure for religious studies