Jury & Selection Committee

Hanna Kristiina Lämsä is the Executive Director of the Association of Cultural Heritage Education in Finland, an NGO. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Helsinki. She also studied at the Università degli studi di Firenze, Université Paul Valery, Montpellier, and the University of Turku.

Her non-academic studies include a Specialist Qualification in Leadership and Management. Her professional career in the cultural heritage education field started at the National Board of Education in Finland, where she worked as an editor, web-editor and a producer.

This was followed by various positions at the Association of Cultural Heritage Education in Finland, established in 2006, where she gradually went from being a secretary to project officer and finally to executive director. In 2018 she was the Project Manager of the European Year of Cultural Heritage at the Finnish Heritage Agency.

She is active on social media and has also provided various commentaries and policy statements as well as other writings in the field of cultural heritage, education and sustainability.
In her capacity as executive director and project manager, she has innovated and managed various cultural projects, aimed at engaging the children and youth with cultural heritage. Under her term, the Association has grown from a new-comer to an influential actor in the cultural heritage sector in Finland and increasingly also at European level.

The organisation works cross-sectorally in order to enhance cultural rights, especially of children and youth, their participation in cultural heritage and their cultural competence. In addition to leadership and management and communication skills her expertise covers cultural sustainability, education and learning, youth engagement and policy-making.

Currently, the Association is leading the Erasmus-cooperation project called Future Narratives.
She is a member of the Board of Europa Nostra Finland, as well as a member in the steering group of the Cultural Heritage Strategy in Finland. She has a wide network of professionals and organisations working with Cultural Heritage and children and youth in Finland and other parts of Europe.

Charles Personnaz is a historian and civil servant, having spent most of his career in the field of cultural heritage both at the French Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Culture. He has been Director of the National Heritage Institute (INP – Institut national du patrimoine) since 2019.
Charles Personnaz has a special interest and commitment to the preservation of Christian heritage in the Middle East. He has authored several books published in France about Byzantine and Greek history and cultural policy.

Árpád Bőczén is the founding president of the Association of Cultural Heritage Managers (KÖME), since 2012. He graduated as an architect at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and as a cultural heritage expert at the Corvinus University of Budapest. His main interest is the human and especially the socio-cultural aspects of our tangible environment. Encouraging people and communities to take an active part in shaping their environment and living spaces whilst developing existing heritage based on value has played a significant role in his practice. Building spaces and structures is equally as important to him as building communities.

He is the country coordinator of Interpret Europe, the international professional network of heritage interpreters. He is a certified interpretive writer and a certified interpretive guide and trainer. He has been the initiator, manager and evaluator of many international projects dealing with the wide range of cultural and natural heritage including built assets, archaeological values, landscapes, memories, objects, digital works, music and many more. He always attaches high importance to the establishment and follow up of good cooperation among different disciplines and cultures. He was the manager of Interpret Europe’s 2018 conference “Heritage and Identity”. This event was part of the European Year of Cultural Heritage program.

Ella was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary and received her B.A in Archaeology and M.A in Cultural Heritage at University College London. She worked as an assistant in public and commercial archaeology and in the heritage sectors in the United Kingdom and Central America. She co-founded Heritage Education Network Belize, a non-profit organisation dedicated to innovative and sustainable ways to understand and safeguard culture and heritage.

Mariam Maka Dvalishvili is a founder and Executive Director of the Georgian Arts and Culture Center – the leading cultural NGO in Georgia. For over 25 years her role in the organisation has included GACC policy-making, strategic planning, fundraising, elaboration, execution and overseeing of GACC projects and ongoing activities. The Development of Cultural Industries and Crafts in particular, is one of the GACC’s major ongoing programmes, among four others. Within this programme and with the support of a wide range of international organisations (including the EU, USAID, etc), Dvalishvili has led numerous crafts development projects, with a focus on the engagement of youth and apprentices, to ensure the continuation of traditions, and to develop products and businesses in accordance with international trends and requirements.

Based on the memorandums with the major arts educational institutions in Georgia (Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, University of Georgia, among others), under the leadership of Dvalishvili many different crafts programs have been organised. These include the provision of capacity building trainings, workshops and internships for the students of crafts/arts departments. On the basis of open calls, young design graduates and artisans have received guidance and support in product development and marketing, crafts business development, export import regulations, copyrights and trademarks and putting them in touch with enterprises to help them acquire internships and work placements.

In 2016, as part of an EU project, Mariam Maka Dvalishvili established the Tbilisi First International Summit of Crafts and Design “Ethno Fest”, which included the participation of craftsmen from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. The Summit takes place on a biennial basis and is an excellent opportunity for young entrepreneurs, designers and artisans to present their work, participate in workshops and conferences and to participate in the planning and implementation of the Summit.

Professor Alex Torpiano is an architect and structural engineer by profession, having studied in Malta, Imperial College under Sir Alan Harris, and the University of Bath under Sir Ted Happold. He has served as Dean of the Faculty for the Built Environment of the University of Malta for the last 14 years, and previously served as Head of the Department of Building and Civil Engineering, and later of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design. In the late 1980s, he set up the Institute for Masonry and Construction Research, which later became a Department of Conservation and Built Heritage in the same Faculty. In the University, he is a member of the Senate of the University, and of the Council of the University. He is currently also Executive President of Din l-Art Helwa, the National Trust of Malta. He has served as President of the local Chamber of Architects and Civil Engineers. He is a founding partner of a private architectural and structural engineering office, TBA periti, and has collaborated with Arup Associates, Ian Ritchie, Walter Hunziger, and Antonio Belvedere on projects in Malta. His specialisation is the structural restoration of masonry structures.

Nicki Matthews MRIAI joined the Built Heritage Policy Team of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, as a Senior Architect in 2018. Her role includes the delivery of a range of
progressive policies for cultural heritage including the contribution on cultural heritage objectives to the Regional Assemblies, the National Heritage Plan 2030 renewal, the National Policy on Architecture, as well as devising strategies for delivering heritage-led urban regeneration and climate change mitigation. As a member of the SEA Forum, Nicola contributes to the Environmental Protection Agency in respect of environmental impact of strategic, national infrastructural projects such as flood relief CFRAM programme, Irish Water, Energy, Transportation and Port Infrastructure etc. where proposals impact on cultural heritage. With regard to the delivery of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht policies through funding programmes, Nicola provides the technical support to the various funding programmes currently operated including the Built Heritage Invest Scheme, The Historic Buildings Fund, the Historic Towns Initiative and the Heritage Council-run Irish Walled Town Network (IWTN).
Prior to this, Nicola was the Architectural Conservation Officer (ACO) for Dublin City Council, with the remit to communicate the built heritage significance of the historic city and its regeneration through the reuse and repair of historic vacant buildings for residential use to meet the housing crisis – in particular the roll out of the ‘Living City Initiative’, to address the vacant upper floors of the historic centre of Dublin.

Georgios Toubekis is a researcher for heritage-led innovation at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT (Germany); member of the international scientific ICOMOS committee CIPA Heritage Documentation; reviewer and field mission expert for ICOMOS in the framework of the reactive monitoring of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and was previously a Jury Member for the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards in the category Research. Toubekis studied architecture at RWTH Aachen University. His research focuses on the use of advanced information systems for the conservation and valorization of cultural heritage in post-conflict scenarios.

Velika Stojkova Serafimovska is an ethnomusicologist, a researcher and UNESCO trained Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) facilitator. Her research focuses on sociological and anthropological perspectives on transitional processes in popular and traditional music and culture and in safeguarding and promoting the intangible cultural heritage on national and regional level. She has published widely on these topics in various multi-authored volumes including ICTM Yearbook of Traditional Music and Routledge publications. As an Associate Professor, she teaches courses on World music, Ethnomusicology and ICH on graduate and postgraduate (MA and PhD) level. As part of the Network of ICH experts in Southeastern Europe she is involved with projects that protect and promote intangible cultural heritage on national and international level participating in Erasmus+ and UNESCO projects. She was part of the team that inscribed all five Macedonian ICH elements on the UNESCO ICH RL, including two multinational nominations. She is part of the international ICTM network since 1999 and Chair of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe, thus participating and organising different academic and artistic events on a regional level. She has participated in numerous international scholarly conferences, symposiums and meetings around the world. In the last ten years, she has also been involved in creating and implementing the national strategy and cultural policy on national level thus cooperating with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia and other cultural stakeholders in the field of culture. As MP and part of the inter parliamentary Green group of the Parliament of the Republic of North Macedonia, she is also involved in the monitoring and implementation of the Green agenda, climate change and protecting natural heritage issues on national level.

Marita Sakhltkhutsishvili is a young heritage professional specialized in museology. She has obtained her degrees at Tbilisi State University, BA in Art History, and MA in Museum studies. She is an experienced cultural heritage project manager and lecturer, also, she leads the authorship rubric in the scientific/popular style journal. Sakhltkhutsishvili works on cultural heritage, contemporary art, and museum issues. She was the coordinator/researcher of scientific projects and the author and co-author of numerous articles.