2) Research

Professor Alex Torpiano is currently Dean of the Faculty for the Built Environment of the University of Malta, a position he has held for the last 16 years; he has served as Head of the Department of Building and Civil Engineering, 1988-1999, 2007-2011, as Head of the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, 2011-2016, as Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, 2016-2020, and Acting Head of the Department of Visual Arts, 2021-2022. Het set up and served as Director of the Institute for Masonry and Construction Research between 1994 – 2009. He is currently member of the University Senate, (since 2008), and has served as a member of the Council of University between 2009-2021. He is a member of the Board of the Institute of Sustainable Energy, and of the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development. He has served as Chairperson of San Anton

School, between 2000 and 2009; as President of the Chamber of Architects and Civil Engineers, 1994-1996, 2017-2019, as Chairman of the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee 1995-1996, 2000-2001, as member of the Periti Warranting Board between 1999-2001 and since 2009. He has also served on the Eurocodes National Implementation Committee since 2002. He is currently Executive President of the National Trust of Malta, Din l-Art Helwa.

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 at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT (Germany). He studied architecture at RWTH Aachen University, where he taught documentation techniques at the Faculty of Architecture. For the Aachen Centre for Documentation and Conservation, he has been the coordinator of heritage preservation campaigns within the UNESCO long-term conservation programme for the cultural landscape of the Bamiyan Valley World Heritage Site (Afghanistan). He is an expert member of CIPA Heritage Documentation and is interested in the use of advanced recording and documentation techniques to improve heritage management processes, particularly the use of remote sensing, laser scanning and geospatial database systems for heritage-related applications. For ICOMOS International, he is an expert on field missions in the framework of the Reactive

 Monitoring of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. He contributes to the the research category of the European Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards, the European Commission’s official prize for cultural heritage projects. His current research focuses on the use of heritage-led innovation and the impact of digital technologies to make the significance of cultural heritage tangible and to contribute to the valorisation of cultural properties and their long-term conservation.

Elena Dimitrova is Associate Professor at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia with over thirty years of teaching and research in spatial policy and planning. She has a Master’s in Architecture, awarded in 1976 and defended her PhD in 1990. Dimitrova’s professional expertise and research interests are in the spatial and sociocultural aspects of sustainable development, participatory planning approaches, interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue on heritage as a factor for urban sustainability. She is a team leader in several international research projects; the author of numerous publications in the fields of urban development and planning, higher education and research, and cultural heritage preservation for sustainable development. Dimitorva is and has been a participant in numerous European academic networks and international conferences.

Elena Dimitrova has been a member of ICOMOS-Bulgaria since 2005 and Vice-President since 2011; a member of CIVVIH (International Scientific Committee on historic cities, towns and villages) since 2010, CIVVIH Advisory Committee member (2018-2021) and Board member (since 2021); representative of ICOMOS-Bulgaria in ICOMOS SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Working Group since 2019. She is a member of the Expert group on European Quality Principles for EU-Funded Interventions with Potential Impact on Cultural Heritage, jointly developed by ICOMOS Europe and the European Commission (DC Culture and Education), which was adopted by ICOMOS General Assembly in 2021. She was Invited to be a panellist (Theme II: ‘Community engagement through culture for sustainable local development’) at the UNESCO Conference on ‘Culture 2030 | Rural-Urban Development: The Future of Historic Villages and Towns’, organised in Meishan, China, in 2019.

Elena Dimitorva has extensive experience in scientific article reviews, ICOMOS missions and desk reviews and the evaluation of educational and research projects in European and national academic and research programmes. She has also been a local assessor for the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards since 2018.

Angelos Kottas is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Architecture of Thessaloniki while his research focuses on Mediterranean cities and heritage management. He has worked at important European institutions and got involved in various cultural projects linked with youth programmes, public space, urban identity, memory, and museums.

Emine Nurcan Yalman is an archaeologist with 30 years of professional and academic experience in prehistoric archaeology and heritage studies. Her heritage work to date has focused on researching the diversity of community understandings and perceptions of various forms of tangible and intangible heritage in different countries (Turkey, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, UAE). She also has a rich portfolio of archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork projects. These include excavations of prehistoric sites and the ethnoarchaeological research of vernacular settlements. She is a longstanding member of the European Association of Archaeologists (joined in 2004; executive board member 2013-2016; member of the committee for the European Archaeological Heritage Prize 2019-present).