Jury

Etienne Poncelet, is Architecte en Chef des Monuments Historiques, responsible for the “Arc de Triomphe” and the “VIIIe arondissement” of Paris, for the cities of Beauvais and Senlis and the estates of Chantilly and Pierrefonds, as well as for the French Antilles. As an architect he has restored over 300 monuments, and on the administrative level is the General Inspector for the historic monuments of Aquitaine and Normandy. He is also a corresponding member of the “Académie d’Architecture”. Internationally he has been active as President of the French ICOMOS Committee between 1997 and 2001, and as Vice-President of the Scientific Council of Europa Nostra since 1989.

Jacques de Saussure was a Managing Partner of the Pictet Group from 1987 to 2016, and acted as Senior Managing Partner from 2010 until his retirement in June 2016. He remains Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Banque Pictet & Cie SA. He is also active as Chairman of the Board of two start-up companies, and sits on the Board of the Swiss Bankers Association. Jacques is a member of the Committee of the Board of Directors of the Swiss Bankers Association, having previously served on the Board of the Swiss Stock Exchange and SIX Group AG, as well as its subsidiary EUREX AG.
Jacques attended Collège Calvin in Geneva, where he graduated with a degree in Greek and Latin. He went on to study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, where he earned a degree in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. He also has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Among his many other activities, Jacques has a keen personal interest in the restoration of historic buildings. As part of his family heritage, he has the privilege of owning two houses of great historical and architectural significance, and over the years has been actively involved in their restoration. This has provided a first-hand opportunity to gain a sound knowledge and true appreciation of this intricate process.

Prof. Dr. Markus Hilgert is a specialist in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Cultural Heritage Research. He is the current Secretary-General of Kulturstiftung der Länder. Previous to this post he was Director of the Ancient Near East Museum at the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin from 2014 to 2018 and from 2007 until 2014, Hilgert held a chair for Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Heidelberg University. Hilgert is the coordinator of the national research alliance ILLICID focusing on the illicit traffic with cultural property in Germany and the director of the “Center for Digital Cultural Heritage in Museums” (CEDICUM) at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In addition, Hilgert is the coordinator of the national program “museum4punkt0 – Digital Strategies for the Museum of the Future” under the auspices of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media.
Hilgert is a member of several governing bodies and advisory boards, including the German Commission for UNESCO (since 2016), the Foundation Board of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH; since 2017), the Advisory Group of the Cultural Protection Fund of the British Council (since 2017), and the Disaster Risk Management Committee of the International Council of Museums (since 2017). In 2016, Hilgert was named the “National Correspondent for the Blue Shield in Germany” and was elected founding President of Blue Shield Germany in 2017. He is also the Vice President of the German Association for Archeology. Hilgert holds honorary professorships at Heidelberg University, Marburg University, and Berlin University (Freie Universität).

Koenraad Van Balen graduated as an Engineer Architect at the KU Leuven (Belgium) in 1979; he obtained a postgraduate degree in architectural conservation in 1984 and he obtained a Ph.D in Engineering in 1991 at the KU Leuven. He is a full-professor at the KU Leuven in the Civil Engineering department. Van Balen carries out research and teaches on binders, masonry and sustainable construction methods. He is the director of the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) at the University of Leuven. He has been the holder of the UNESCO Chair on preventive conservation, monitoring and maintenance of monuments and sites since 2008. He is a member of ICOMOS and was the first secretary-general of the International Scientific Committee on the Analysis, Repair of Structures of the Architectural Heritage (ISCARSAH). He has long been a member of the general assembly of Monumentenwacht Vlaanderen. He is or has been an advisor to, amongst others, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and the Getty Foundation. In 2002-2003 he was a visiting scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. He supervises research carried out at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation related to various aspects of investigation, valuing and managing (World) Heritage. Amongst others he coordinated the research carried out by the RLICC on Heritage Counts for Europe in collaboration with Europa Nostra. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European wide research coordination initiative “Joint Program Initiative: Cultural Heritage (JPI-CH)”. He is a member of the Jury of the ILUCIDARE Special Prizes.

Charles Pictet had a long career in private banking, which began in 1969 at the eponymous Pictet & Cie, where he was Senior Partner for almost 10 years until 2005. He then went on to join the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). Throughout this time he held positions on various professional bodies and committees. Alongside his professional responsibilities, Charles was heavily involved in the field of culture – his second area of expertise.
He invested considerable energy in the efforts to restore the windmills of Patmos. This project, which won a European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award in 2012, is one that he is especially proud of. One of these restored mills now regularly produces flour, and a film retracing their history has been made to show in schools around Greece.
He has also served as Vice-Chairman of the Foundation Board of the International Red Cross Museum, and contributed to its reconstruction. The new International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, which opened in 2013, houses the permanent exhibition on the organisation’s humanitarian work.
In 2014 Charles also gave a new lease of life to the Walkyrie, Switzerland’s and possibly even Europe’s oldest operating motor boat, which is part of Lake Geneva’s heritage. Built in 1882 in Liverpool, the Walkyrie belonged to Gustave Eiffel, who had it moored in Vevey in front of his property for more than 30 years. Now completely restored, the Walkyrie once again glides gracefully across the waters of Lake Geneva.
From 2002 to 2010 Charles was Chairman of the Cercle du Grand Théâtre de Genève (the body that brings together patrons and institutional bodies wishing to support the Grand Théâtre’s activities in the fields of opera, dance and drama).
Charles Pictet has always seen culture as heritage that should be protected as a whole, and he has therefore developed particular interests in the fields of music, philanthropy and architecture.
He is also member of the 7ME advisory panel since 2013.

Marianne R. Ytterdal, Assistant Professor at Aalesund University College in Norway, covering Mercantile, Maritime, and Technical English, Cultural Differences and Project Presentations, recently retired. She studied English and American Languages and Background, History of Art, Nordic languages and literature and Educational Science at the Universities of Bergen, Oslo and Trondheim. She has been active within Europa Nostra since 2000, in the years 2007 – 2009 in the new governance group. She is currently President of the Board of the Kjell Holm Foundation in Norway, which she joined in 2003. For 25 years, the last five as President, she was board member of Fortidsminneforeningen: The Society for the Preservation of Norwegian Ancient Monuments, an NGO that owns and maintains 41 properties of cultural significance. Other cultural heritage boards of interest are: the European Network of National Heritage Organisations, Jugendstilsenteret (The Norwegain Art Nouveau Centre), and Den norske Kulturminnedagen (European Heritage Days). Ytterdal has also published a number of textbooks for the teaching of Technical and Practical English, the most recent having been released in 2015.

Dr. Pavlos Chatzigrigoriou is a Civil Engineer with a MSc in Architecture (Conservation and Restoration) and a second MSc in Environmental City Planning. In 2012, Pavlos obtained his PhD from the School of Architecture of National Technical University of Athens. His thesis concerned the digital documentation of the Historic Buildings of Hermoupolis. The project, “HERmoupolis Management e-System” was subsequently upgraded to “HERMES”: an open source platform for heritage and historic buildings. In 2015, “HERMES” was awarded the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award in Category Research and Digitisation. Pavlos is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Interaction Systems Design Lab (University of Aegean) and teaches “Digital Heritage” at the Polytechnic School of the University. His current research efforts focus on digital tools for education on cultural heritage and the possibilities of digitally linking architecture with intangible cultural heritage. He is the chair of the non-profit NGO “HERMeS”, where he works on digital documentation of cultural heritage using various applications (mobile apps, museum installations etc). He is also a project officer at the EU Management Organisation Unit for digital heritage projects in the Region of South Aegean, Greece. 

Yonca Kösebay Erkan is Professor of Architecture at Kadir Has University and coordinator of the PhD programme in Preservation of Cultural Heritage. She received her Ph.D. from the Istanbul Technical University in Architectural Heritage in 2007, having previously completed Master’s Programmes at the Yıldız Technical University (1996) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998). In 2018 she was the coordinator of the World Heritage Cities Programme / Historic Urban Landscape at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre as Senior Advisor. She has worked as a researcher on several heritage focused projects, for example, TUBİTAK, “Intangible Heritage at Covered Bazaar, Istanbul and defining the innovation capacity” from 2012 to 2014 and for the EU Culture Program – Cultural Rupestrian Heritage In The Circum-Mediterranean Area: Common Identity – New Perspective (Chrima-Cinp) from 2010 until 2012. She is the UNESCO Chair on Management and Promotion of World Heritage Sites: New Media and Community Involvement and is a member of numerous scientific organisations such as the Chamber of Architects, Turkey and ICOMOS. She has been a member of Europa Nostra since 2009. Her research has received prestigious awards both nationally and internationally, while it has been published extensively in international and national journals, newspapers and books.

Georgios Toubekis (Greece/Germany) is a researcher at the Aachen Center for Documentation and Conservation at the Faculty of Architecture, RWTH Aachen University. He has a wide range of experience in designing, planning and monitoring conservation projects in the field of cultural heritage. He has lectured at the University of Aachen and has experience in conceptualising and executing training activities in field projects. He is an expert in the recording and documentation of cultural heritage sites and the use of remote sensing, laser scanning, GIS and database systems. He has been particularly active with the UNESCO Division of Culture, ICOMOS in recording endangered heritage sites and coordinating conservation projects, for instance the technical documentation of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Jam and the improvement of the management system, photo documentation and damage assessment of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan. Georgios Toubekis has published many articles regarding documentation methods in conservation projects and has taken part in numerous international conferences on the issue.

Michiel Purmer graduated in 1997 as a historical geographer at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) on castle ruins in the Dutch landscape. Since 2000, he has worked as a landscape and heritage specialist at Natuurmonumenten. This society is a Dutch NGO which manages over 100,000 hectares of nature, landscape and heritage in the Netherlands, including several fortresses, 60 country estates, 400 archeological sites and 530 kilometers of landscape elements like wooded banks, lanes and hedges. In 2018, Michiel Purmer obtained a PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His thesis, The Landscape Preserved, is about the management of cultural landscapes and other heritage by Natuurmonumenten over the past 70 years.
As a heritage specialist with Natuurmonumenten, he works in the broad spectrum of conserving, managing and redeveloping cultural heritage, with focus on cultural landscapes and archeology. He was a member of the board of the Historical Geographical Society Utrecht and the Royal Dutch Numismatic Society. He often writes about cultural heritage and regularly speaks at symposia and conferences on this topic. He also publishes on various other subjects, including numismatic and clay pipes. Recently, he worked on the cultural heritage of the Geul river Valley and the recent developments of castle ruins in the Dutch landscape.