The Archaeological Work of the University of Cyprus, 2018: Welcoming Remarks

These welcoming remarks, delivered in Greek, open the fourth annual workshop of the Archaeological Research Unit (ARU) of the University of Cyprus, reviewing the unit's activities in 2018. Vasiliki (Lina) Kassianidou begins by introducing a short promotional video produced with Katerina Nikolaidou and the university's Office of Promotion, showing the unit's excavations and facilities.

In her address, Kassianidou summarizes the events of 2018. Working with the Department of Antiquities, the Cyprus University of Technology and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, the ARU organized two workshops, three international conferences in Cyprus and one in Crete, alongside two public lecture series with more than twenty speakers, all streamed on YouTube. In collaboration with the production company Tetraktys and the Municipality of Aglantzia, the unit also co-organized the first International Festival of Archaeological, Historical and Ethnographic Documentary at Skali Aglantzias.

Kassianidou welcomes new postdoctoral researchers who secured funding in 2018, including Giorgos Papantoniou, Anna Georgiadou, Theodora Moutsiou and Massimiliano Secci. She then outlines the Phase 2 proposal for the Eastern Mediterranean Science, Engineering and Technology Center of Excellence for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (MEDSTACH), submitted under the European Teaming for Excellence programme. Coordinated by Phaedon Kyriakidis of the Cyprus University of Technology with colleagues from the ARU (Giorgos Papasavvas, Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou, Theodora Moutsiou and Andreas Charalambous), the Department of Antiquities, the Cyprus Tourism Organisation, the Foundation for Research and Technology and University College London, the proposal reached the final evaluation stage in Brussels. She closes by thanking the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation for endowing a professorship in digital humanities, the A. G. Leventis Foundation for funding research projects, the Department of Antiquities, and the unit's staff.

The Rector of the University of Cyprus follows with his own address on his first visit to the ARU since taking office. He notes the unit's research library, field and laboratory equipment, four Research Promotion Foundation grants, four Marie Curie programmes including NARNIA, and the MEDSTACH proposal. He concludes by highlighting the recent donation and repatriation of a collection of Cypriot antiquities from Harvey Mudd College in California to the University of Cyprus, arranged through links formed during Kassianidou's research on the mining heritage of Cyprus, to be exhibited in the university's library building.