2) Research

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.

Over the course of her professional career, Sabine Nemec-Piguet has participated in several studies on the improvement and assessment of historical urban quarters in, for example, Yverdon and Geneva. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Architecture from l’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – EPFL in 1978, with a thesis on the revitalisation of an industrial quarter in the city of Geneva. In 1981, Sabine Nemec-Piguet became an architect-city planner in the Regional Service for Monuments and Historical Sites, in the Department of Public Works. From 2002-2008, she was the Director of the Regional Service for Monuments and Historical Sites in the state of Geneva. This was followed by the position of Director of the General Office for Heritage and Historical Sites for the state of Geneva from 2008-2019. This agency comprises three services: the service for archaeology, the service for monuments and sites, and the service for the inventory of monuments. As such, the General Office employed 40 staff members under her leadership.
Sabine Nemec-Piguet is member of the Federal Commission for Historic Monuments Preservation (Switzerland). She has published numerous works, most notably on the urban and architectural development of Geneva, the legal framework of urban development, and Geneva’s heritage.