Lana Nastja Anžur: Heritage Science and the Valuation of Cultural Heritage: Connecting the Public, Professionals, and Various Disciplines
The American Slovenian Education Foundation (ASEF), in collaboration with Young Professionals for Heritage Science (HERI SCI) and the Alumni Club of the Faculty of Arts, UL (Department of Archaeology), invites you to a lecture on the contemporary understanding, research, and valuation of cultural heritage.
The lecture will be held on Thursday, May 14, at 6:30 PM by Lana Nastja Anžur, a doctoral student at the Heritage Science Laboratory of the University of Ljubljana and an ASEF Fellow of the 2024 generation. The event will take place in the Blue Room (Modra soba 5) at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.
To attend the lecture, registration is required by May 14, no later than 5:30 PM.
About the Lecture
The lecture will address the question of what cultural heritage is and why it is important in modern society, as well as how people in different cultural environments experience, value, and assign meaning to it. The central part will present research conducted in Slovenia (National Gallery, Križanke) and Mauritius (Aapravasi Ghat), involving more than 900 individuals from the general public and professional community. It will highlight findings on how perceptions of heritage value change across different cultural-geographic and typological contexts.
The lecturer will also share her research journey—from Italy through Bosnia and Herzegovina to Mauritius—and her collaboration with Dr. Saša Čaval, which deepened during an ASEF research visit to Stanford and continues today. Finally, she will present the activities of the Young Professionals for Heritage Science Slovenia, an organization that connects young interdisciplinary researchers in the field.
About the Lecturer
Lana Nastja Anžur is a doctoral student at the UL Heritage Science Laboratory. She researches methodological approaches to the valuation and impact analysis of cultural heritage, linking them with participatory research and citizen science. She regularly publishes her research results in scientific journals and monographs and has acquired and led three research projects.
She is the recipient of various international scholarships; this year, as a Fulbright Scholar, she will be a guest at Stanford University, where she also completed an ASEF research visit under the mentorship of Dr. Saša Čaval. Lana is also the founder of the Young Professionals for Heritage Science Slovenia (HERI SCI), which operates under the auspices of the Slovenian node of the European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science. This year, the model was transferred to the French context with the establishment of a national association of young researchers in heritage science, with which HERI SCI collaborates intensively.
About ASEF Young Minds
ASEF Young Minds is a series of popular science lectures by young scholars, encouraging them to present their research work and the experiences gained through the ASEF fellowship program in a way that is accessible and understandable to the general public. In this project, ASEF partners with local organizations in the home regions of the lecturers. Through this cooperation, the project aims to connect and integrate young educated professionals into the local Slovenian environment. ASEF connects and unites Slovenian scientists and academics worldwide.
The project is supported by the Office of the Republic of Slovenia for Youth and the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad.