Jury

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.

Agni Petridou is highly qualified in the restoration of monuments, the rehabilitation of historic settlements and urban centers, with a Master in Architecture (University of Florence, Italy), a Master of Arts in Town and Country Planning (UWE, Bristol, UK), a Postgraduate Degree in Urban Conservation from the International Centre (ICCROM), and a Diploma in Specialization for the Restoration of Monuments from the University of Rome. She lent her expertise as Senior Architect / Planning Officer for the Nicosia Municipality from 1981-2014, and served as Team Leader of the Nicosia Master Plan Bi-communal Team from 1990-2010. In this position, she was responsible for the definition of planning Intervention policies for the historic centre and other neglected conservation areas, design and implementation of large scale residential revitalisation programs, pedestrianisation schemes, redesign of public open spaces and the restoration and re-use of historic monuments. Currently, she is working as the “City Engineer” (the Director of the Technical Services) of the Nicosia Municipality and is responsible for masterplan development projects, planning control, infrastructure improvement, the design and implementation of large scale development projects. Her key qualification concerns the rehabilitation of historic settlements in post-conflict situations and negotiation between conflicting parties. She is a member of several international professional organizations, including the Roster of Experts on Historic Preservation of The Commonwealth Secretariat – Technical Division (1989 – present), the Scientific Council (2008 – present) and Council (2011 – present) of Europa Nostra, and the bi-communal Technical Committee for the Cultural heritage in Cyprus (2009 – present). Agni Petridou received The Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2007) for her contribution to the rehabilitation of the walled city of Nicosia.

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. Robert Young is currently a freelance archaeological consultant. He has wide ranging experience in University and Community Education and Training and a detailed knowledge of practical archaeological techniques. He is widely-published and is a well regarded expert in landscape survey, excavation and small finds analysis. Having obtained a PhD from the University of Durham in 1984, Dr. Young went on to teaching positions at both the University of Wales and the University of Leicester. In his later work with Northumberland National Park Authority (NNPA) and English Heritage/Historic England (EH) he developed policy and strategy for the care and conservation of the historic environment of the north east of England. Large numbers of students and local community members have received fieldwork training in the course of his university and community based work on archaeological sites across the UK. He is currently involved in running a branch of the Council for British Archaeology’s Young Archaeologists Club at Newcastle University and regularly gives talk to local archaeology and community groups on practical archaeology topics and related heritage issues.

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 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 Cultural Heritage field.
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 the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan. Mr. 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.

Gabriel Ruiz Cabrero graduated as an architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) in 1971, and then went on to earn a PhD from ETSAM in 1987. He has taught at the Chair of Architectural Composition in the ETSAM since 1995 and has been a visiting professor in the School of Architecture of both Columbia University, New York and the University of Miami. He has lent his expertise to les Commissions d’Examen Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral in Laussane, Switzerland and as a visiting critic in the Department of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design on multiple occasions. From 2003-2008, he served as an External Examiner at the School of Architecture of Glasgow and as a member of the “Colegio Docente Dottorato Internazionale di´Architettura Villard D’Honnecourt” from 2004-2007. As an architect, he has been responsible for a wide array of construction and restoration works in both Spain and overseas. He has served as curator, jury member and director of several national and international events regarding architecture and cultural heritage and has had research in these areas published many times. He was Director of the magazine Arquitectura from 1980-1986 and in 2011, was awarded the “Premio Nacional Ciudades Patrimonio de la Humanidad” prize by the Ministerio de Fomento.