Work pursued by APAC Labs researchers has been the focus of research fellowships and conference presentations at prominent institutions and venues.
Specifically, Nikolas Bakirtzis (Assoc. Professor, CyI) was awarded a two-month residential fellowship (July-August 2024) at the Center for Advanced Studies "Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages" at the University of Tübingen in Germany. During his stay he is pursuing a collaborative project with Luca Zavagno (Assoc. Professor, Bilkent University) under the title “‘Outsiders’ in Byzantine Islands: Monks, and Religious Leaders Across the Mediterranean”. The project addresses issues of migration, cult and identity in islands like Cyprus, Crete and Sicily during the Byzantine period. A focus on monks and religious leaders explores their role as agents of change and cultural influence, as well as, key representatives of the Byzantine state. APAC Labs’ research has been addressing the heritage of Byzantine and Medieval monasticism in Cyprus and across the Eastern Mediterranean. A range of projects and research activities have pursued interdisciplinary studies of monastic establishments and their artistic and architectural remains as well as their present state of preservation. For example, the famous UNESCO Painted Churches of the Troodos region have been the focus of systematic research by the APAC Labs team in collaboration with the Cyprus Department of Antiquities.
The internationally prominent Gordon Research Conferences: Frontiers of Science series featured an important meeting on Scientific Methods in Cultural Heritage Research between July 7 and 12, 2024. Sorin Hermon (Assoc. Professor, CyI) was an invited Discussion Leader and Presenter offering a talk with the title Data-Driven Research in Art and Archaeology.
The Scientific Methods in Cultural Heritage Research GRC is a premier, international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research, prioritizing time for discussion after each talk and fostering informal interactions among scientists of all career stages.
The conference gathered together more than 200 researchers and graduate students from all over the world, focusing discussions on frontiers in Heritage Sciences. Among them, Sorin Hermon presented the topic and led the discussion on Data-Driven Research in Art and Archaeology. His talk focused on the challenges to transform Heritage Sciences and more broadly Cultural Heritage into an open, data-driven discipline, focusing on cross-disciplinary collaboration and shared workflows. During the talk and discussion, the challenges of setting up DIGILAB, the digital platform of E-RIHS, the European Research Infrastructure on Heritage Science and the newest EU-funded initiative to create a Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage, through the ECHOES project, were amply discussed.
