WHS Alumni Conference “World Heritage and Sustainable Development”, BTU Cottbus – June 16 -19, 2011
Gustavo F. Araoz
Gustavo F. Araoz is an architect whose professional practice and academic involvement have focused on the protection of the cultural heritage. His unwavering commitment to strengthening international cooperation in heritage conservation earned him the position of President of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in 2008. Prior to this he served two terms as Vice President of ICOMOS. Moreover, Gustavo was Executive Director of the US/ICOMOS from 1995 to 2009. As President of ICOMOS, Gustavo has launched bold new actions to better protect cultural heritage throughout the world, such as the establishment of a global heritage monitoring network, launching a worldwide program to identify and mitigate emerging risks and threats, building international forums to discuss and determine the changing role of heritage in society and appealing personally to save highly endangered heritage sites in Japan, Spain, Romania and Sweden.
Dagnija Baltina
Apart from a diploma in pedagogy, a BA in history from the University of Australia and an MA in Cultural Heritage from Deakin University, Australia, Dagnija Baltina is also a BTU World Heritage alumna. In 2002, Dagnija started working for the Latvian National Commission for UNESCO. In 2008, she became its Secretary General. She is also the vice president of UNESCO’s Executive Board, vice chair of the Riga Historic Centre Preservation and Development Council and member of the Cultural Heritage Expert Board of the Latvian State Cultural Capital Foundation. Dagnija has participated in a large number of relevant international conferences on topics as diverse as arts education and 20th century World Heritage sites.
Kristal Buckley
Kristal Buckley has served as a Vice-President of ICOMOS since 2005, and is a member of the ICOMOS ISC for Intangible Cultural Heritage. As a Vice-President, she has contributed to a number of aspects of the work of ICOMOS, including the ICOMOS World Heritage programme, the ICOMOS Scientific Council and the establishment of ICOMOS Pasifika. She has participated in the ICOMOS delegation to the World Heritage Committee since 2007. Kristal Buckley is a Lecturer in Cultural Heritage at Deakin University’s Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific in Melbourne, Australia. She has professional qualifications in archaeology, anthropology and public policy, and has worked in both private practice and government. She has represented cultural heritage professionals at national advocacy and advisory forums. Her work in Australia has included Indigenous and non-Indigenous heritage projects, policy and management, with an emphasis on community involvement. During 2010, she worked as Manager of Major Projects for the Wurundjeri Tribal Council, the Traditional Owners of the Melbourne region.
Sheridan Burke
Sheridan Burke is a partner of Godden Mackay Logan Australia’s largest firm of heritage consultants. She is a conservation planner with thirty five years experience in heritage management projects. Sheridan is the author of numerous Conservation Management Plans and she lectures and publishes widely, particularly on Twentieth Century Heritage conservation and the interpretation of heritage sites. Sheridan is a member of the Sydney Opera House Conservation Council and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra. Sheridan has international and Australian experience including UNESCO and ICOMOS monitoring missions and World Heritage Convention nomination assessments. She has worked at a senior level in heritage interpretation, curatorial direction, exhibition development, historic property operation and heritage asset management —developing and implementing innovative policy and guidelines—for all levels of government and the corporate sector She is a former Vice President of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) (1996-2005), and has been closely involved with the drafting and development of a range of ICOMOS charters and publications. She is a foundation Steering Committee member for the ICOMOS International Conservation Centre in Xi’an, China. Sheridan is the founding and current president of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Twentieth Century Heritage.
Simona Cadar
Simona Cadar obtained a Master of Arts in World Heritage Studies from Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus, Germany. She previously studied Sinology and English Literature at the University of Bucharest, Romania and at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. She worked for four years as expert in the fields of culture and education at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in China, where she lectured on Western Civilization and developed several educational projects with focus on intercultural competence. As intern at the UNESCO WHC in Paris, Ms. Cadar assisted in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in Asia and the Pacific and was particularly involved in the preparation of the serial nomination of the Silk Roads on the World Heritage List. Ms. Cadar currently cooperates with the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission as expert on cultural heritage. Her areas of interest are cultural routes, sensitive heritage, culture and development. Since December 2010, Ms. Cadar has been coordinating the international programme World Heritage Studies at BTU Cottbus, Germany.
Nobuko Inaba
Director/Professor, World Heritage Studies, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba. Trained as an architect and architectural historian, she received her doctoral degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology on the theme of the 19th century architectural history of Japan dealing with the particular social phenomena of Europeanization, modernization and nationalism in that century. She gained her practical knowledge and experience on heritage conservation while serving in the Japanese government and its affiliated research institute from 1991 to 2008. Her work covered not only domestic affairs but also international affairs including the World Heritage Convention programmes and many individual international cooperation projects. In April 2008 she took up her current position. Her research and teaching scope covers all areas of the heritage field and in particular, as a heritage researcher in general, she is concerned with conceptual discussions in the theory and policy study fields — i.e. authenticity and integrity discussions in the Asian context, historical development of intangible heritage concepts, and studies on the relationship of the culture and nature heritage fields. She is a member of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, a member of ICOMOS and its International Scientific Committee on Training, and a member of the executive committee of ICOMOS Japan.
Guido Licciardi
Guido Licciardi graduated in Architecture and Urban Planning from Florence University (Italy) and he holds a PhD from the Department of Structural Engineering of Milan Polytechnic (Italy), all with highest honors and academic distinctions. His expertise includes urban development, infrastructure planning, historic city regeneration, cultural heritage conservation, community based city management, disaster risk reduction and recovery, and sustainable tourism development. He has been working with the World Bank since January 2009 as an Urban Specialist, in the Finance, Economics, and Urban Development Department. He previously worked with Aga Khan Trust for Culture; UNESCO; Carnegie Mellon University; Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization; Italian Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities; and International Council on Monuments and Sites. He has developed extensive field experience in the Middle East, North Africa, East and West Asia, and worked in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United States, and West Europe. He also published about 30 articles on international journals and lectured at international conferences and universities.
David Logan
David Logan is a Partner of Godden Mackay Logan Heritage Consultants, the largest heritage consultancy practice in Australia. David has qualifications in architecture, heritage conservation and town planning and over 25 years’ experience in heritage management in both the private and public sectors. He is a former Vice President of Australia ICOMOS and was involved in drafting the current version of the Burra Charter. Currently, he serves as a member of the Executive of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Historic Towns and Villages as well as on various government-appointed bodies and NGO heritage committees including the Heritage Council of New South Wales, the state government’s advisory and approvals authority. In his practice, David specialises in heritage-related masterplanning and development projects, and urban planning work. He has extensive experience in providing heritage advice on major development and urban renewal projects, heritage impact assessment, preparing planning controls and guidelines for state and local governments, expert witness work and heritage training. He has undertaken projects across Australia and overseas including a World Heritage monitoring mission in Malaysia for ICOMOS and UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. He is currently assisting the Getty Conservation Institute in the planning and facilitation of a workshop for World Heritage city mayors to be held at the forthcoming conference of the Office of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) in Sintra, Portugal in November. Between April and July 2010, David was a visiting lecturer and tutor in the Masters degree course in World Heritage Studies at the BTU Cottbus.
Christoph Machat
Christoph Machat was born 1946 in Sighisoara/Romania, graduated in art history, archaeology and museology at the University of Fine Arts in Bucharest and worked in the State Conservation Office of Romania. Since 1973 in Germany, he earned his doctorate at Köln University in 1976, worked as a senior investigator in the Bavarian, since 1980 in the State Department for the Care of Historic Buildings in the Rhineland. He published several books and articles on art history and monuments’ conservation, is the editor of the series “Topography of Historical Monuments” for the Rhineland and for Transsylvania/Romania (bilingual editions). He started teaching conservation as a guest lecturer at the Universities of Köln and Bonn in 1980, ICCROM Rome (1994-96), since 1996 at the University of Architecture “Ion Mincu” in Bucharest and is one of the founders of the post graduate Heritage Conservation Studies at the University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj Napoca, Romania, Associate Professor since 1998. In 2009 he received the “Georg Dehio” Main Award by the German Federal Secretariat of State for Culture and Media, the Dr.h.c. in 2001 from the University Babes-Bolyai and in 2006 from the University of Fine Arts, both in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. As a member of ICOMOS since 1978 he is the former president of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Vernacular Architecture (1995-2005) and co-author of the ICOMOS “Charter on the Built Vernacular Heritage” (1999). He served as Vice President of ICOMOS Germany, being involved in the work of the monitoring group for the World Heritage Sites of Germany. He is a member of the Executive Committee of ICOMOS, since 2010 responsible for the editorial work of the series of ICOMOS World Reports on “Heritage at Risk”.
Leo Schmidt
Leo Schmidt is an art historian. He earned his doctorate at Freiburg University in 1980 with a thesis on the architecture of Holkham Hall, an English 18th-century country house. He was a senior investigator in the State Department for the Care of Historic Buildings in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Since 1996 he has been Professor of Architectural Conservation at Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) Cottbus. Since 1998 he has been Director of the postgraduate course “Building & Conservation” and he is also closely involved with the “World Heritage Studies” Master’s Program at BTU. He has wide-ranging interests and has published extensively, focussing on 18th-, 19th– and 20th-century architecture and on difficult heritage such as the Berlin Wall. He is a member of International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)-CIF (International Training Committee) and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Michael Schmidt
Prof. Dr.-Eng. Dr. h.c. (NMU Dnepropetrovsk) Michael Schmidt, born 1957 in Kassel, graduated 1983 in Landscape Planning at University of Hannover, and received his doctoral degree 1987 at University of Göttingen. After serving in the Federal Agency for the Environment, he became head of the soil protection unit at the Brandenburg State Agency of the Environment and was 1992 appointed Governmental Executive Director. In 1994, he became Professor at the newly established Chair of Environmental Planning at BTU Cottbus, served 1997-2000 as Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Process Engineering, and 2000-2006 as Vice-President for International Affairs. Since 1997, he is consultant of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. At BTU Cottbus, he initiated the international study programmes “Environmental and Resource Management” and “World Heritage Studies”. In 2002, he received the “Award for Excellence in International University Cooperation” by the German State Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and in 2005 the Dr. h.c. of the National Mining University, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.
Lutz Töpfer
A historian by training, educated in Mainz, Bonn and Harvard University, Lutz Töpfer has been the manager for Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt’s (DBU) heritage program since 2005. Focussed on innovative means and methods to reduce the damages of adverse anthropogenic influence, such as air pollution on heritage, DBU has provided more than 13 million€ for World heritage sites.