Gustavo Araoz
President, ICOMOS International

Mr Gustavo Araoz is an independent heritage consultant. Since 2008, he has served as President of ICOMOS. Besides teaching at various universities, Gustavo’s experience is composed of many and varied projects. He has been consultant/advisor to the World Monuments Fund, the US Commission for UNESCO, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Conservation Institute, the National Park Service, the US Departments of Defense and of State, the Organization of American States, the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, and the national heritage agencies of Paraguay and El Salvador.

Toshiyuki Kono
Professor & Director of LL.M./ LL.D. Programs of Kyushu University

Mr. Toshiyuki Kono is a professor at the Faculty of Law, Kyushu University (Japan). Professor Kono specialises in private international law, intellectual property and protection of cultural heritage. Among other positions, he is a member of the Executive Committee of ICOMOS. Professor T. Kono is an editor of a number of books, including The UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (Intersentia, 2012), Intangible Cultural Heritage and Intellectual Property (Intersentia, 2009) and Intellectual Property and Private International Law (Hart, 2012)

Marta de la Torre
The Getty Conservation Institut

Mrs. Marta de la Torre has been involved in the cultural heritage and the art fields since the 1970’s. In recent years she served as Interim Director of The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, and work as a chief scientific advisor to Unesco’s Programme for Museum Development and Collections Care.

She is a member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to which she was appointed by President Bush and President Obama. She has also served the Board of ICOM – the International Council of Museums and of its U. S. national committee (ICOM-US). She was president of the International Committee of Museum Management (INTERCOM) of ICOM. In the United Kingdom she was a member of the Study Board of the Wall Paintings Conservation Programme at the Courtauld Institute in London, and of the Hamilton Kerr Institute at Cambridge University.

Her publications include Case Studies in the Management of Cultural Values (2005); Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage – Research Report, (editor) (2002), Heritage Conservation and Values in Globalizing Societies (with R. Mason) in World Culture Report 2. Paris: UNESCO (2000); Values and Heritage Conservation – Research Report, (c0-editor, 2000).

Cornelius Holtorf
Professor, Linnaeus University

Mr. Cornelius Holtorf is a Professor of Archaeology at Linnaeus University. His current projects include excavation project in Portugal as well as some new projects on “The Archaeology of Time Travel” (with Bodil Petersson), “Places as stories”, and “Applied cultural heritage”. He is an author of Archaeology is a brand! The meaning of archaeology in contemporary popular culture (Oxford, Archaeopress).

Neil Silberman
Professer, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Neil Silberman is an archaeologist and historian with a special interest in history, archaeology, public interpretation and heritage policy. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and was trained in Near Eastern archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Awarded a 1991 Guggenheim Fellowship, he is a contributing editor for Archaeology Magazine and is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Cultural Property, and Near Eastern Archaeology.

Since 1998, he has been involved in the field of public heritage interpretation and presentation, working on various projects in Europe and the Middle East. From 2004 to 2007, he served as director of the Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium. In 2008, he was appointed to the faculty of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and became one of the founders of its Center for Heritage and Society. He also serves as the president of the ICOMOS, International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation (ICIP) and is a member of the ICOMOS International Advisory Committee and Scientific Council.

With Israel Finkelstein, he is the author of The Bible Unearthed: Archaelogy’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006) etc.

Mike Turner
Charge de mission UNESCO ADG Culture
UNESCO Chair in Urban Design and Conservation Studies

Michael Turner is a practicing architect, professor, teaching in the graduate programme of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and UNESCO Chairholder in Urban Design and Conservation Studies.  

Serving on many international professional-academic bodies he combines practice and academia contributing many articles and chapters on current design issues. His recent European research activities include the management of pre-historic sites in the Mediterranean; the Jerusalem-Berlin Forum reviewing these Divided Cities and a tri-national Partnership for Peace project with Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian academics both offering mechanisms for a sustainable shared heritage. He is now consortium member of a FP7 project designing safer urban spaces.

Within UNESCO, he has advised on Ilha de Mozambique and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp and a cultural inventory in Ethiopia.  Chairing Israel's World Heritage Committee he was elected in 2005 to the UNESCO Committee and a term as vice-President.  He has accompanied the debate on Historic Urban Landscapes since its inception and is currently special advisor to the Assistant Director-General for Culture and participating in expert missions.

Harriet Deacon
Heritage consultant, University of Cape Town

Dr. Harriet Deacon is a consultant based in the UK and correspondent to a heritage and archive project in South Africa called the Archival Platform. She has worked on both the Intangible Heritage and World Heritage Conventions. She has experience in conservation management planning at a World Heritage Site (Robben Island), and in heritage impact assessment in South Africa. In 2003 she was lead author on a study, The Subtle Power of Intangible Heritage, evaluating worldwide legal and financial instruments for safeguarding intangible heritage for the International Network on Cultural Policy (INCP-RIPC). She participated in the development of national policy related to the Intangible Heritage Convention in South Africa from 2007-2009. Since 2010 she has consulted to the UNESCO Intangible Heritage Section, writing training materials for the capacity building programme on ratifying and implementing the Convention. As part of this work she has co-facilitated capacity-building workshops in China, Cuba, Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Kenya. She is a member of ICOMOS UK and the international scientific committee on ICH.
          

Mariko Fujioka
Research Associate, Cultural Policy Program, National Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies

Ms Mariko Fujioka is a research associate at the Cultural Policy Program, the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. She specializes in cultural heritage studies with a particular interest in protection of cultural heritage in case of emergencies including armed conflicts and natural disasters. Since 2010 she has served as a member of Japanese Delegation to UNESCO meetings for the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. She has also been involved in Japan ICOMOS National Committee and in charge of administering the affairs of its Secretariat since 2010.

 

Dawson Munjer
Permanent Delegate of Zimbabwe at UNESCO
          

Luca Zan
Professor, University of Bologna

Mr. Luca Zan is a professor of Arts Management at GIOCA, University of Bologna, where he acted as Director between 2002-2008. He has served as visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University since 2004 and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing since 2012. Professor Zan has worked on several projects concerning Cultural Heritage in China, Machu Picchu, Turkey, the British Museum, as well as performing arts. He has also conducted historical research on management and accounting at the Venice Arsenal in the 16th century. He has published extensively on strategy, managerial rhetoric and cultural management.
          

Carolina Castellanos
Adviser, ICOMOS World Heritage

Ms. Carolina Castellanos is a cultural heritage consultant who specializes in the conservation and management of heritage sites, particularly archaeological and earthen architecture sites. For the past 15 years, she has consulted for diverse international organizations such as The Getty Conservation Institute, ICCROM, ICOMOS and UNESCO’s World Heritage Center on a variety of issues ranging from management planning to policy development for cultural heritage. Ms. Castellanos has carried out several reactive monitoring missions for ICOMOS to assess the state of conservation of World Heritage properties throughout Latin America. She was also a regional expert for UNESCO’s Periodic Reporting Exercise for Latin America and the Caribbean. Ms. Castellanos currently serves as World Heritage advisor for ICOMOS International. She has also served as a professor for site management and conservation planning at regional and international courses, including ICCROM’s Sharing Conservation Decisions (2008 edition), Conservation of Built Heritage (2010 edition) and PAT courses (1996 and 1999 editions).