Participants
Anna Mária Nyárádi, PhD

Art historian
Eötvös Loránd University EC Centre of Hellenology
Hungary

nyaradianna@yahoo.com

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Anna Mária Nyárádi participated in the inventorization and supervision of ecclesiastical cultural heritage in Hungary. She earned her PhD in Art History from the Eötvös Loránd University in 2012. Her research is focused on prints as iconographical and ornamental sources and on the activity of goldsmiths working under Hungarian rule.

Arijana Koprčina, PhD

Art historian and ethnologist, museum advisor
Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb
Croatia

akoprcina@gmail.com

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Arijana Koprčina graduated from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Department of Art History, in 1992. She defended her PhD in 2012 with the dissertation entitled Designing Silver in the 19th Century in Croatia. In her dissertation, she synthesizes the stylistic and morphological metalworking of profane utilitarian silverwork as well as provides an overview of the production of domestic and foreign imported 19th-century silverwork of a trade and manufactural level and factory-made products, including the area of design-based objects of 19th century in the holdings of the Museum of Arts and Crafts and other museums and archives in Zagreb and Croatia.

Since 1997, she has been the head of the Metalwork Collection of the Museum of Arts and Crafts and museum advisor since  2015. Her research fields are applied arts, profane, and sacral goldwork and silverwork from the Middle Ages untill recent production and jewellery. She is focused on the research of the oscillation of style, fashion, and taste in production of liturgical vessels and practical everyday utensils, including table and household decor accessories, cutlery, and similar products, as well as historical and recent jewellery. She is the author of sections of metalwork and jewellery for cultural exhibitions and projects: Biedermeier in Croatia (1997), Historicism in Croatia (2000), and Art Nouveau in Croatia (2003), she did research on profane silverwork and jewelry for the exhibition The Magnificent Vranyczanys (2016) and curated exhibition of liturgical vessels, ex-votos and jewellery for the exhibition Visovac – Spirituality and Culture on Bila Stina (2019). She took part in the exhibition and catalogue project Ars et Virtus, 800 years of shared cultural heritage in Zagreb and Budapest (2020), and she is also the author of metalwork sections of permanent museum exhibitions at the Cathedral of St. Teresa of Ávila Treasury in Požega (2015), the Diocesan Museum of the Požega Bishopric (2016), and the Jewish Museum in Zagreb (2016).

Arijana Koprčina wrote scientific and professional papers and chapters on silversmithing and goldsmithing, jewellery, and liturgical utensils in publications and scientific monographs. She is the author of the scientific monograph Zlatarstvo u Zagrebu 1450.–1550. Liturgijski predmeti i nakit (Goldsmithing in Zagreb 1450–1550. Liturgical Objects and Jewelery), published in 2022 by Školska knjiga d.o.o. and the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb, Croatia.

Barbara Kamler-Wild, PhD

Art historian
Austria

kamler.wild@gmail.com

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Barbara Kamler-Wild was born on 8 April 1955 in Grieskirchen, Upper Austria. She was married to Dr Heinz-Georg Kamler and has been widowed since 2018.

Barbara Kamler-Wild studied art history and classical archaeology at the University of Vienna and graduated in 1982. She completed a doctoral thesis entitled The Goldsmith Joseph Moser and the Viennese Goldsmith’s Art of the 18th Century. She has worked as a head of the Museum of Medieval Art, Classicism and Romanticism and the Collection of Contemporary Sculpture in the Belvedere Museum (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere) in Vienna, Austria (1983–1990) and as a head of the Vienna office of the international auction house Sotheby’s (1990–1991). In 1992 she was managing director of the Apollo Art Galleries, a gallery for Old Masters in Vienna. Next year she founded a consulting office offering art expertise and appraisals for private and institutional collectors, insurance companies, galleries, and museums. From 2009 to 2021 Barbara Kamler-Wild has been an Art Director of Wiener Silber Manufactur, a producer of silver design. Since 1994 she has been registered at court as a court-sworn and certified expert in Austrian painting, sculpture, and silver. Among her publications are Glanz des Ewigen. Der Wiener Goldschmied Joseph Moser, Diozösanmuseum St. Pölten and Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, 2003; Die Wiener Silbersammlung Bloch-Bauer/Pick, Vienna, 2008; Baroque goldsmith’s art of the treasury in Stift Klosterneuburg, 2011; Gold and Silver from Vienna and Copenhagen, exhibition Christiansborg Palace, Copenhagen, 1985; 900 years Benedictines in Melk, Stift Melk, 1989; Georg Raphael Donner, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 1993. She has also numerous contributions to exhibition catalogues.

Carmen Tănăsoiu, PhD

Conservator and curator
National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest
Romania

carmen_tanasoiu@hotmail.com

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Carmen Tănăsoiu is the conservator of the liturgical silverware collection and a curator in the Romanian Medieval Art Department at the National Museum of Art of Romania. She studied at the University of Bucharest and is a doctor in history with a thesis entitled Iconography of the Royal Family of Romania. Also, she studied Preservation, Restoration and Management of Cultural Heritage (Conservazione, restaurazione e gestione dei Beni Culturali) at the University of Bologna.

She is an author of the exhibitions and heritage catalogues Pewters Art (2012), Ornaments from Past (2015) (about medieval Romanian jewellery), and Metamorphoses (2018) (on the collection of gems and cameos). She is a co-author of the permanent exhibition of the Romanian Medieval Art Gallery in the National Museum of Art of Romania and more than 20 other exhibition projects of the National Museum of Art of Romania in Romania and abroad, among which are the exhibitions Deomene in Italy, Sigismund of Luxembourg in Hungary, Architecture as Icon in Greece and USA, Treasures of Romanian Art in China. She published in volumes and scientific journals or presented in radio and television broadcasts numerous studies and articles on liturgical silverware, manuscripts, ornaments, and jewellery, as on the portraits of Romanian royalty.

Konstantinos Dolmas, PhD

Byzantinist
Mount Athos Foundation of America
Greece

dolmas@mountathosfoundation.org

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Konstantinos Dolmas defended his dissertation on the middle and late Byzantine reliquaries, at the Department of History, Archaeology, and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly. His interests are focused on Byzantine and post-Byzantine metalwork, and Greek palaeography and codicology. He worked on the Mount Athos Digital Heritage Project and collaborated on the project concerning the Study of the Ecclesiastic Silver at the Prefectures of Magnesia and Larissa (15th19th Centuries) with the Use of Non-Destructive Techniques. He is participating in the catalogue of the manuscripts of the Philotheou Monastery at Mount Athos (vols 1-2, forthcoming). Konstantinos Dolmas is the Secretary of the Greek Palaeographical Society (ELPE, http://elpe.web.auth.gr/), and the Mount Athos Foundation of America’s Liaison in Greece (MAFA, https://www.mountathosfoundation.org/).

Darina Boykina, PhD

Assistant Professor
Institute of Art Studies,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

dboykina@gmail.com

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Darina Boykina is a researcher in the scientific group Medieval and National Revival Art in the Fine Arts Department of the Institute of Art Studies in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She obtained her MA degree in art history at the National Academy of Arts in 2016 and defended her PhD thesis, Reliquaries in Bulgaria from the Late Medieval and National Revival Periods, in 2019. Since 2020, she has been an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art Studies.

Her research interests are in the field of ecclesiastical applied arts and material culture from the 15th–19th century period in Bulgaria and the Balkans. She specialises in the study of liturgical objects and silversmithing, the history and development of silversmithing centres in Bulgaria during the period of Ottoman rule. She published studies discussing the functional and artistic features of the reliquaries and taxidiotic boxes and their role in the religious life of the Christians, the veneration of the relics of saints, and the shaping of local cults of the saint. She has participated in national and international scientific conferences. Since 2017, she has been working on research projects dedicated to Orthodox art in Bulgaria. She has received scientific awards for a young scientist, among which is the prestigious prize of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Ivan Evstratiev Geshov in the field of Cultural Heritage and National Identity for 2019.

Dimitris Liakos, PhD

Archaeologist
Ephorate for the Antiquities of Chalkidiki and Mount Athos
Greece

liakos712003@yahoo.gr

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Dimitris Liakos studied at the Faculty of History and Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and obtained a Ph.D. degree in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art at the Faculty of Architecture of the same university (2000). His dissertation is entitled Post-Byzantine Sculpture on Mount Athos (in Greek). He works at the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chalkidiki and Mount Athos, Ministry of Culture and Sports (Greece), and he teaches in the Faculty of Theology (School of Social Theology and Christian Culture) of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in the Post-Graduate Study Program Studies in the Spirituality, History, Art, and Music Tradition of Mount Athos. His research focuses mainly on Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art on Mount Athos and other regions, such as Albania, Crete, Cyprus, and the Dodecanese. He has published many articles in conference proceedings and collective volumes and entries in exhibition catalogues.

Dragoş Năstăsoiu, PhD

Research Fellow
National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest
Romania

dragos_nastasoiu@yahoo.com

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Dragoş Năstăsoiu is currently a Research Fellow at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest. He was trained as an Art Historian (National University of Arts, Bucharest, BA in History and Theory of Art, 2008) and Medievalist (MA and PhD in History and Medieval Studies, Central European University in Budapest/Vienna, 2009 and 2018). He has worked as a Research Fellow at the Art History Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava (2021–2022) and the Centre of Medieval Studies of the National Research University in Moscow (2018–21). In the past, he has held various scholarships at research institutions and universities, such as the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia (2023–2024), New Europe College in Bucharest (2022–2023), American Research Center in Sofia (2014–2015), “St. Cyril and Methodius” University in Veliko Tarnovo (2013–2014), and University of Trnava (2013). He was a CEMS (Centre for Eastern Mediterranean Studies) Teaching Fellow at the Art History Department of the “Ivane Javakhishvili” State University in Tbilisi (2012) and has taught Medieval and Modern Art at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (2009–2010) and Medieval Cults of Royal Saints and Historiography at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2018–2021). He is the author of Gothic Art in Romania (Bucharest, NOI Media Print, 2011) and co-author of Mittelalterliche Dankmäler im Tal der Großen Kokel (Bucharest, Art Conservation Support 2022, translation of the 2018 Romanian edition), as well as the author of many research articles published in important international journals. His research interests include medieval art in the former Kingdom of Hungary and Central Europe, the interaction of medieval art, the cults of saints, and political propaganda, and phenomena of cross-cultural artistic exchanges between Byzantium and the West.

Francesca Stopper, PhD

Independent scholar
Italy

frstopper@gmail.com

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Francesca Stopper received her PhD in Humanities at the University of Trieste, discussing a thesis, entitled Venetian goldsmithing: liturgical objects between 1680–1797, in 2015. Previously at the same university, she gained a three-year degree in Sciences of Cultural Heritage with a thesis on the silversmith Angelo Scarabello, and a master’s degree in Art History with research on the Venetian goldsmith Andrea Fulici. Her research activity has always focused on Venetian art of the 17th and 18th centuries, in particular on decorative arts and painting, collaborating on several occasions with the Venetian Civic Museums Foundation and the Institute of Art History of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. The main subject of her studies is the history of Venetian goldsmithing in the Baroque and Rococo ages, carried out with attention to the workshops and masters active in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the interrelation between the arts and visual sources. Moreover, she turned her attention to the aspect of training in Venetian workshops, participating in the project Garzoni: Apprenticeship, Work, Society in Early Modern Venice (16th18th centuries), promoted by the University of Lille III, Université de Rouen, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. In 2017 she obtained the Francis Haskell Scholarship. Since 2021, she has been working as a cataloguer for Civici Musei di Storia ed Arte in Trieste, national museums, and local offices of the Ministry of Culture.

Georgi Parpulov, PhD

Independent scholar
Bulgaria

gparpulov@abv.bg

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Georgi Parpulov read History at the University of Sofia and Art History at the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis, entitled Toward a History of Byzantine Psalters, ca. 8501350 AD, was published in 2014. His main interest is the history of Byzantine painting, but he has recently made some small contributions to the study of metalwork: The Sceptre of the Abbots of Bachkovo (2019), Incense-Boats and Drinking Cups (in press), The Mystery of the Pogoyan Monastery (co-authored with Darina Boykina and Nona Petkova, 2024). In the current (summer) semester of 2024, he is employed as a Visiting Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at the University of Munich.

Iglika Mishkova, PhD

Assistant Professor
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgaria

iglika.mishkova@gmail.com

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Iglika Mishkova, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She has a master’s degree in history and a specialisation in the history of Byzantium and the Balkans. She is a doctor in museology. Iglika Mishkova is an author of publications on ethnological and museological issues and a curator of many exhibitions.

Livia Stoenescu, PhD

Art historian, Associate Professor
Texas A&M University,
USA

stoenescu.livia@gmail.com

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Livia Stoenescu, holder of a PhD in Art History from Queen’s University, has published on the topics of icon-image theory, visual metamorphosis, and relic assimilation into Italian and Spanish Renaissance art. She is the author of the book-length monograph Temporalities, Transmaterialities, and Media: The Pictorial Art of El Greco (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and editor of the essay collections Creative and Imaginative Powers in the Pictorial Art of El Greco (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) and The Interaction of Art and Relics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020). The latter edited collection investigates the interfaces of relics, aesthetic meaning, and historical significance of the Early Modern circulation of religious objects across the world. In 2021, Livia Stoenescu was awarded the joint fellowship Villa I Tatti, Florence, the Italian Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Harvard University, and Prado National Museum, Madrid, for her research project Ornament as Sacred Agency in the Architectural Drawings, Paintings, and Polychromatic Sculptures of Alonso Cano (1601–1667). Currently, she examines the circuits of production and distribution of silver liturgical objects from the global south, within which Southeastern religious objects set up avenues of cultural exchange with the principal sites of silver mining in the Americas. Livia Stoenescu has brought to her students the energy and intellectual curiosity of her work in an array of graduate and undergraduate courses she has developed as a Professor of Art History at Texas A&M University and other American universities for which she taught.

Teodor Lucian Lechintan, PhD

Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome
Italy

ltlechintan@orientale.it

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Teodor Lucian Lechintan was born in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Currently, he lives in Rome and works at the Pontifical Oriental Institute (PIO). He is in charge of lectures on Byzantine Art History. He also teaches decorative arts, which is why he is interested in these subjects and in contributing to topics in these fields. In January 2022, he completed his PhD on Palaiologan Monumental Art with the title The Iconographic Program of the Byzantine Church of Curtea de Argeș (board committee: Massimo Bernabò, University of Pavia, Michele Bacci, University of Fribourg, Valentino Pace, University of Udine). Before this, he studied Art History (three-year degree) at the National University of Fine Arts, Bucharest (2005–2008), and theology in Paris in Centre Sèvres (2008–2011). He achieved a license in Oriental Liturgies in Rome (2013–2015). He already has some peer-reviewed articles on Romanian Byzantine Art and many reviews published in prestigious periodicals related to his field of research. In the last few years, he has also carried out an important work of popularization of the art in prestigious magazines in Italian language.

Mariam Vardanyan

Art historian
Yerevan State University
Armenia

vardmeri@yahoo.com

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Mariam Vardanyan is a lecturer at the Yerevan State University. She graduated from Yerevan State University, the Department of Armenian Art History and Theory, and just after graduation started to teach. She teaches History of Applied Arts and History of Armenian Silversmithing at the university.

It has already been for several years that the Armenian metal ritual objects have become the main topic of Mariam Vardanyan’s study. This interest started in 2012 when she was invited to study the metal objects preserved in the collections of the Armenian Diocese of Romania.

Currently, Mariam Vardanyan continues her research on the Armenian ritual objects studying the Armenian collections of Tehran, as well as the Armenian Mekhitarist Congregation of Venice.

Mateja Jerman, PhD

Senior expert consultant-conservator
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia

Scientific associate
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Rijeka, Republic of Croatia

mateja.jerman.ri@gmail.com

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Mateja Jerman graduated in 2010 from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, with a major in art history and history. She received a doctorate in Art History from the University of Zadar in 2020 under the supervision of Damir Tulić, PhD. Her thesis was titled Liturgical Objects Made of Precious Metals from 1400 to 1800 in the Former Pula Diocese. Since 2012, she has been a scientific associate in the projects of the Early Modern Art Section at the Department of Art History of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka. Since 2017, she has worked as a senior expert consultant-conservator for immovable and movable cultural heritage at the Conservation Department in Rijeka, which is part of the Directorate for the Protection of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. She was the winner of the École française de Rome scholarship in 2019.

Her area of expertise is in the applied arts, with a specific focus on goldsmithing during the early modern period. Her special focus is on works created in Venice and the artistic centres of the Holy Roman Empire, considering the cultural circles that dominated the eastern coast of the Adriatic. She presents her research at both international and domestic scholar conferences and publishes papers in conference proceedings and specialised journals. She is a co-founder of the Society for Study of Decorative Arts and Silversmithing (Belgrade), an international group of art historians researching goldsmithing.

 

Mila Santova, D.Sc.

Art historian, Professor, and corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgaria

mila_santova@yahoo.com

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Mila Santova, D.Sc., is a professor and corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She was a long-time director of the Institute of Folklore at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and the first director of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with an Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, established in 2010. Mila Santova graduated in art history and has two consecutively defended dissertations. She works in the fields of art history, ethnology, and cultural anthropology. She has published six books, of which four are monographs, and more than 300 studies, articles, etc. She has managed 25 international projects with France, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Spain, Slovenia, Turkey, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

Milena Ulčar, PhD

Art historian, research associate
University of Belgrade
Serbia

lenaulcar@gmail.com

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Milena Ulčar is a Research Associate at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Philosophy at the Belgrade University. Her doctoral thesis on reliquaries and the history of the body in the early modern Bay of Kotor (Republic of Venice) was defended at the same university in 2018. Currently, her research is focused on problems of animism and naturalism of religious artefacts in the Venetian commonwealth.

Miljana Matić, PhD

Art historian
Serbian Orthodox Church Museum, Belgrade
Serbia

maticmiljana1@gmail.com

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Miljana М. Matić was born in 1981. She completed her art history studies at the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Belgrade in 2005, where she finished her post-graduate magister’s studies in the History of Serbian Art of the Middle Ages in 2008 with the thesis Ktetor Portraits in Serbian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries. She completed her doctoral studies in 2014 with the doctoral dissertation entitled Serbian Icon Painting in the Age of the Restored Patriarchate of Peć 1557–1690. Since May 2017, she has been employed as a curator at the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, receiving the professional title of curator in 2018. In March 2023, Miljana Matić became the deputy director of the Serbian Orthodox Church Museum, and received the title of scientific associate in the scientific field of humanities, art history group, given by the National Ministry of Science, Technological Development, and Innovation. Miljana Matić’s scientific and research work takes place in the field of art history, with a special emphasis on donor portraits, icon paintings, and works of applied art of the Middle Ages and the post-Byzantine period. She is the author of two scientific monographs, several scientific works in international scientific magazines and collections of papers, author, and co-author of several exhibitions at the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and a collaborator on several major exhibitions of prominent national importance.

Nikolaos Mertzimekis, PhD

Archaeologist and Byzantinologist
Ephorate for the Antiquities of Chalkidiki and Mount Athos
Greece

mertzinik@gmail.com

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Nikolaos Mertzimekis works as an archaeologist-Byzantinologist in the Ministry of Culture of Greece, Ephorate of Antiquities of Chalkidiki and Mount Athos, Department of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Antiquities. He studied Archaeology and History in the “St. Cyril and Methodius” Veliko Tarnovo University, Bulgaria. The topic of his PhD thesis is Monuments inscriptions of the Athonite Monastery of Zographou. He participated in excavations on the island of Thasos, on Chalkidiki, and on Mount Athos (Ierissos, Ouranoupolis, Protaton, Great Lavra, Iviron, Chilandar, Zographou, etc.). He has participated as a speaker in numerous scientific conferences, symposiums, and meetings, relevant to Byzantine and post-Byzantine archaeology (excavations, inscriptions, etc.), art (silver ecclesiastical utensils, woodcarving, embroidered textiles, etc.) and history (relationships between Mount Athos and Balkans, Russia, etc.), both in Greece and abroad (Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, etc.). He has published many articles on the aforementioned issues (archaeology, art, and history). Also, he participated as an organizer of exhibitions of artworks from Mount Athos in Greece and abroad (Thessaloniki, Helsinki, Paris, etc.).

Nicoleta Bădilă, PhD

Art historian, curator
Bucharest Municipality Museum
Romania

nicoletabadila87@yahoo.com

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Nicoleta Bădilă is a curator at the Bucharest Municipality Museum, Modern and Contemporary History Department, and a national accredited expert in artefacts with artistic significance – particularly portraiture in modern Romanian painting. She graduated from the University of Bucharest, Faculty of History, Art History Department, and obtained a doctorate in history with an analysis of the language of gesture in European court portraiture. Previously she worked as a history teacher, a post-doctoral researcher at the Police Academy “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” and a 3D scanning technician at the Romanian Ministry of Culture.

She has worked in the Bucharest Municipality Museum since 2016 and researches mainly collections of Romanian Art (painting, icons, sculpture, engraving, and decorative arts). Among the temporary exhibitions Nicoleta Badila curated are Raffet. Travel illustrations (14 June – 27 August 2023), Between Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej and Nicolae Ceausescu. Communist portrait in the collections of Bucharest Municipality Museum (7 April – 30 July 2023), Romanian Principalities. Landscapes in European engraving from the 19th century (8 June – 4 September 2022), and Power and status. Portraits from the Sculpture collection of Bucharest Municipality Museum (14 July – 26 September 2021).

As a result of her research work on the museum collections, she published many articles and a catalogue of ethnographic ceramic items from the Domains of the Royal House of Romania, a particular form of decorative art in Romanian popular art that was created under royal family guidance. Among her other articles are The Untold Story of an Archangel: Saint Michael from Văcărești Monastery (Urbanitas, No 3, 2023), Power and Status. Methodological Considerations on the Portrait from Romanian Sculpture (Cotroceni National Museum, 2022), Building an Identity: the Portraits of the Founders of Brancovenesti Settlements (Cotroceni National Museum, 2021), Romanian Medicine at the Beginning of 20th Century. Victor Babe: Study Case (Bucharest Municipality Museum, 2018), The Sacrifice Without Blood. The Palls from the 20th Century from the Collection of the “Dr. Nicolae Minovici” Ethnographic Museum (Bucharest Municipality Museum, 2018).

Nona Petkova, PhD

Art historian, Assistant Professor 
Institute of Art Studies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Bulgaria

nonapetkova@gmail.com

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Nona Petkova is a research scientist in the Medieval and National Revival Art Research Group, Fine Arts Department of the Institute of Art Studies. She obtained her MA degree in Art History with a specialization in Medieval Art and Culture at the New Bulgarian University, Sofia. In 2020, she defended her PhD thesis Treasury Gospel Bindings from Bulgarian Lands (16th– first half of 18th Century) at the Institute of Art Studies. She was granted École française d’Athènes scholarships (April 2008, August 2009). She has been an archivist at the Manuscripts and Old Printed Books Department of St Cyril and St Methodius National Library in Sofia (2012–2019), as well as a coordinator of the donation program Adopt a Book (2017–2019). Since 2022, she has been a guest lecturer at New Bulgarian University.

Nona Petkova works in the field of Orthodox art and church silver with a focus on sacred vessels, silversmithing workshops and centres. Her research interests also include the artistic and cultural exchanges in the Balkans during the Ottoman period. Another area of her research is the manuscript culture of this period in relation to the decoration and binding of the codices, as well as the analysis of paper (filigranology).

Ruth Bryant

Student
Utrecht University
Netherlands

ruthebryant2@gmail.com

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Ruth Bryant received dual degrees in Art History and Biology at Case Western Reserve University. She is continuing her research in the humanities as a master’s student in art history at the University of Utrecht. At Case Western Reserve University, she won the Muriel S. Butkin Award in Art History for best overall performance and highest GPA. She received an Undergraduate Research Grant from the Baker-Nord Centre for Humanities as well as a Student Research Spotlight Award (Baker-Nord) for her involvement with Everlasting Plastics: the 2023 US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Her work alongside Dr. Andrea Rager (Professor of Art History) culminated in the design and implementation of the symposium Canal to Cuyahoga: Everlasting Plastics in Context, held at the Cleveland Museum of Art, including organizing various workshops. This spring Ruth participated in the Case Western Undergraduate Art History showcase where she presented her honours thesis, Spoils of Whales: Commodifying Nature in 17th-Century Dutch Arctic Genre Scenes. She delivered her paper, Analyzing the Torah Shield: Understanding the Abundance of Animal Imagery through the Zohar, at the prestigious 2024 SUNY New Paltz Art History Symposium. Ruth Bryant developed this research in the course, Forms of Experience in Early East Slavic Art, which examined the monuments, mural cycles, and icons of medieval and early modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania.

Simeon Tonchev

PhD student
Institute of Art Studies,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

sim.tonch@gmail.com

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Simeon Tonchev is an art historian and historian. Graduated in Art History in 2018 and MA in Art History and Cultural Heritage in 2020 at the National Academy of Arts, Sofia. He studied History of Bulgaria during the National Revival Period (18th–19th century) at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.
His research interests are in the fields of Christian art, the art and culture during the Bulgarian National Revival, and the artistic processes and centres of that time. Author of publications about Orthodox art from the 19th century in the Region of Central Southern Bulgaria. In his PhD thesis developed at the Institute of Art Studies, he studies the drawing collections of 18th–19th-century Bulgarian icon painters.
Member of the Bulgarian research team of the international project Visual Culture, Piety, and Propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th – Early 20th Century).

Stavroula Sdrolia, PhD

Archaeologist
Ephorate for the Antiquities of the Prefecture of Larisa
Greece

rsdrolia@hotmail.com

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Stavroula Sdrolia is a doctor in archaeology and a Head of the Antiquities of the Prefecture of Larisa, Thessaly, Greece. She excavated many archaeological sites in Thessaly, especially in Velika, Larisa. Among her scientific interests are post-byzantine frescoes and icons in the region of Thessaly.

Paschalis Androudis, PhD

Archaeologist, Associate Professor
Aristotle University
Greece

pandroudis@hist.auth.gr

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Paschalis Androudis has studied Architecture, Archaeology, and Conservation of Monuments in Greece, France, and the UK. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Byzantine and Islamic Art and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Vuk Dautović, PhD

Art historian, Research associate
University of Belgrade – Faculty of Philosophy

vukdau@gmail.com

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Vuk Dautović is an art historian from Belgrade, Serbia. He received his BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Belgrade studying at the Faculty of Philosophy, Art History Department. His doctoral thesis was entitled Art and Liturgical Ritual: Ecclesiastical Objects in Serbian Visual Culture of the 19th Century. His field of research includes the material culture of the early modern period and the visual culture of Southeastern Europe. Vuk Dautović’s primary area of expertise is ecclesiastical art, first and foremost liturgical objects and church utensils. His research revolves around various phenomena related to objects of applied art in the service of rites and ceremonies, from performativity to their agency in transferring cultural models and ideas, and including interactive participation of material objects in cultural dialogues within societies. Another area of his research is related to studies of Jewish visual culture and history in the Balkans, in particular on ceremonial art and different manifestations of Sephardic Jewish visual culture. In 2017, he was awarded a bursary by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). In the same year, he was awarded the Order of Caballero Del Ladino in the name of the fifth President of the State of Israel Don Yitzhak Navon at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Vuk Dautović has published numerous papers and studies on liturgical silver and related phenomena. He has also participated in numerous international scientific conferences.