Four new members in the European Heritage Label selection panel
The European Commission has appointed Riin Alatalu, Gábor Sonkoly, Anne Marie Thiesse, and Koenraad Van Balen to the European Heritage Label’s selection panel. They are experts of European history, heritage and culture and have occupied important positions in academia and the cultural heritage sector.
On 7 June 2023, the European Commission announced the four new members of the European Heritage Label’s European panel responsible for monitoring and selecting the European Heritage Label sites.
What members of the selection panel do
The panel is responsible for carrying out the selection and monitoring at EU level. There are 13 independent experts nominated by the European Commission, European Parliament, the Council and the Committee of the Regions. The panel members ensure that the selected sites apply properly the selection criteria.
The mandate of the four experts appointed in 2020 expired in December 2022. The European Commission announced the call for expression of interest to become panel members on 16 December 2022.
161 applicants replied to the call and the commission established a pool from these applications keeping in mind the objective of geographical balance.
Meet the Appointed Experts
Riin Alatalu
Associate professor in the Estonian Academy of Arts. Chairwoman of the Heritage Conservation Council Education. Member of Board ICOMOS International since 2017.
Gábor Sonkoly
Former Chair of the European Heritage Label panel between 2020 – 2022. Vice Director of the History Institute of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, and scientific manager of the TEMA+ Erasmus Mundus Master programme.
Anne Marie Thiesse
Specialist in Contemporary Europe’s cultural history. Her research team, "Cultural Transfers", is located at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In recent years, she has taught as a visiting professor in various universities.
Koenraad Van Balen
Graduated as an engineer architect and obtained in 1991 a PhD in engineering at the KU Leuven. He is the director of the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) at the University of Leuven. He has been the holder of the UNESCO Chair on preventive conservation, monitoring and maintenance of monuments and sites since 2008.
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