Between June 28 and July 2, 2022, the University of Bucharest hosted the Summer School Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanities: Current Research and Dissemination Methodologies, the third event within the CIVIS project The Heritage Conceptualizations: A Multifaceted Approach.
The event was organized by the Institute of African Studies within the University of Bucharest, and the courses were held by professors from CIVIS universities which were partners in the project (University of Bucharest, Autonomous University of Madrid and University of Glasgow) and researchers from the National Institute of Heritage who were joined by colleagues from the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism and from the Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
What gave this scientific event a special atmosphere was the participation, at the invitation of the University of Bucharest, of professors from Hassan II University in Casablanca – Morocco and the University of Sfax – Tunisia, institutions with privileged status within CIVIS, as well as from Félix Houphouët-Boigny de Cocody University Abidjan-Côte d’Ivoire.
The lectures and discussions in English and French were attended (in a hybrid format) by students from the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs of the partner universities in the project.
Tradition, inheritance and the transmission of heritage were the topics around which the courses and seminars were held during the working days, and the topics covered were both tangible and intangible heritage as well as virtual heritage.
The interdisciplinary summer school hosted by the University of Bucharest gave the opportunity to meet, exchange ideas and expertise between specialists on very diverse issues related to heritage, topics of interest both in the European and African academic milieu, at a time when the preservation of cultural heritage became more than ever a priority.The atmosphere and the usefulness of this summer school are visible in some testimonials of the participants that can be accessed here.More details on the topics of discussion and the program of the Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanities: Current Research and Dissemination Methodologies summer school are available in the full program of the event, here.The Heritage Conceptualizations: A Multifaceted Approach project was conceived and carried out within the Institute of African Studies. The institution with an interdisciplinary vocation created in 2017 as part of the University of Bucharest brings together professors and researchers from several faculties and collaborates with other centers with a similar vocation from universities in the country, in Europe, in Africa and in the United States of America. The institute carries out scientific research activities, organizes conferences, colloquiums and other public scientific events in the field of African studies. It also gets involved in the master’s programs and contributes to the integration in the research activities of doctoral students who are trained in related fields.
The project financed under CIVIS is the result of collaboration between partner universities within the consortium (University of Bucharest, Sapienza University of Rome, Autonomous University of Madrid, University of Glasgow), universities with privileged status (University of Hassan II Casablanca-Morocco, University of Sfax- Tunisia, Cheikh Anta Diop University Dakar-Senegal) and other universities (University of Pau-France) and research institutes (National Institute of Heritage) with which the members of the Institute have worked over time. The team that carried out the project, coordinated by Simona Corlan Ioan (director of the Institute of African Studies), includes professors: Alexandra Lițu and Alexandru Vasiliu (Department of Ancient History, Archeology and Art History within the Faculty of History, University of Bucharest), Javier Salido Domínguez (University Autonomous Madrid), Carlo Giovani Cereti (University Sapienza Rome), Jelmer Vos (University of Glasgow)The core of the project is the analysis of different types of conceptualizations and problematization of heritage status in different socio-cultural, political and economic contexts. Tradition, transmission of heritage, memory and heritage have become topics of interest in many cultural areas in recent years. The central objective of this project was to bring together experiences from apparently different areas, but which, in reality, going through traumatic experiences (colonization and communism), share similar experiences in the field of heritage preservation and transmission.The project will continue in the coming years with the exchange of professors and students, the preparation and teaching of courses in the partner universities on common topics of interest and the publication of a volume that will confirm the state of research of the members of the project.