4) Citizens Engagement & Awareness-raising

Davida de Hond is a member of the management team of Museum Arnhem, a museum located in the eastern part of the Netherlands. As head of public and program, de Hond is responsible for education, marketing, communication, programming and exhibitions. Previously she worked as an entrepreneur in the cultural field, focusing on heritage and community building. She has a focus on participation and education through heritage and art. She has also worked for Erfgoed Nederland, the national heritage agency, with a role in the team that focused on heritage from an international perspective. For the Reinwardt Academy she has worked on international cooperation projects that focused on new museology, eco museology, community building and innovation in heritage education.

Besides her different employments, she is also active as an advisor on committees regarding culture and heritage subsidies. Currently for the Mondriaan Fund, and in the recent past for the municipality of Rotterdam through the RRKC, Provincial committee on culture and heritage in Gelderland and the fund for Cultural Participation.

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.

Pavlos Chatzigrigoriou is a Civil Engineer with a Master’s in Protection, Conservation and Restoration of Monuments, a Master’s in Environmental Planning, a PhD in Architecture (Digital Cultural Heritage), and a post-doc in Digital Heritage at the University of Aegean. In 2015 his research (HERMeS) led him to the prestigious European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage “Europa Nostra.” HERMeS is now part of the “Best Practices for Strategy 2021” established by the Council of Europe and is currently extended to many historic cities. He attended as a guest speaker, among others: the “EU Cultural Forum”, “Best in Heritage”, “EU Best Practices in public administration”, “Digital Heritage”, “Strategy 2021” and many more.

He was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the UNESCO Chair for Digital Heritage at Cyprus University of Technology. Today teaches Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of the Aegean, he is Chairman of the jury of the European Culture Awards – Europa Nostra in the category “Citizens’ actions and raising awareness of society”, co-founder of the non-profit NGO “Heritage Management e-Society (HERMeS)” for the digital management of heritage, chairman of the Board of Directors of the “Syros Institute” and Project Officer at EU funding for South Aegean Region.

Flora Baquelaine has been coordinator of the Culture and Tourism Commissions in the European Association for Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) Euroregió Pirineus-Mediterrània for 10 months in 2023.
She is currently team member of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya’s research project “Franco’s regionalisme from Catalonia: centripetal practices and discourses” (PID2021-125227NB-I00), an activity that she combines with the task of collaborating lecturer in the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at the UOC-UdG.

While practicing architecture, Grace Emely’s passion for heritage grew stronger and became part of her since. She accomplished her master’s in Urban Management and Development at Erasmus University Rotterdam, with a thesis focused on World Heritage Sites’ impact on social and economic development. She is a freelancer and volunteer engaged in the numerous activities of the heritage industry.

Marius Müller studied German and Spanish Law, Art History and Modern and Contemporary History (2020 Grado en Derecho; 2018 First State Exam in Law; 2016 B.A.). He completed a PhD at Bonn University with a dissertation on the interdisciplinary exploration of the interactions of law with the public sphere regarding the concepts of artistic significance. Having served as Founding President of ESACH (European Students’ Association for Cultural Heritage) he became a member of the “Heritage Communication” working group of the DNK and of ICOMOS Germany. Since August 2021 he has been working as Judicial Service Trainee i.a. on postings with the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin and the European Commission in Brussels on issues of cultural policy.

Dr. Hakan Shearer Demir is an expert in the field of human rights and democratization, with a specific focus on sustainable development, displacement, local governance and cultural heritage. Dr. Shearer Demir has worked with non-governmental organizations as well as inter-governmental organizations, including the Council of Europe, the European Union, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Labor Organization. He has MA in international and intercultural management from SIT Graduate Institute and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Strasbourg, where he is also an adjunct faculty member. His recent work has focused on local development initiatives, heritage inclusion, refugees and migration, integration and governance with particular attention to the co-construction of communities following displacement.