Welcome addresses: The Archaeological Work of the University of Cyprus, 2017

These opening addresses, given in Greek, introduce the third annual one-day workshop of the Archaeological Research Unit (ARU) on the archaeological work of the University of Cyprus in 2017.

Lina Kassianidou, Director of the ARU, reviews the unit's activities over the past year, including three workshops, two international conferences and over twenty public lectures broadcast online. She reports that a joint proposal with the Cyprus University of Technology, the Department of Antiquities, the Cyprus Tourism Organisation, FORTH in Greece and the Institute of Archaeology at University College London ranked first among 208 submissions in the first phase of the European Teaming for Excellence programme, aiming to establish an Eastern Mediterranean Science, Engineering and Technology Centre of Excellence for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (METS-ARCH). Kassianidou dedicates the day's workshop to the memory of Ino Nicolaou, who had died a few days earlier. She notes Nicolaou's work across classical archaeology, numismatics and epigraphy, recalls the 2007 conference held in her honour and edited by Demetrios Michaelides, and announces that Nicolaou bequeathed her library, archive and collection of squeezes of Cypriot inscriptions to the university, where Anna Panayiotou has begun sorting the material. She also thanks Vassos Karageorghis and his wife for donating their personal book collection to the university library.

Constantinos Constantinou, Vice-Rector of the University of Cyprus, speaks on the statutory position of the ARU as the university's first research unit and the model for thirteen subsequent units, its integration with the Department of History and Archaeology in training postgraduate students, and its record in securing European research funding.

Charalambos Bakirtzis, Director of the A. G. Leventis Foundation, conveys the greetings of Chairman Anastasios Paul Leventis and Commissioner George David. He speaks on the foundation's funding of archaeological research programmes at the university since 2000 and adds his tribute to Ino Nicolaou.

Speaking first on behalf of the Director of the Department of Antiquities and then in his own capacity as Curator of Antiquities, Giorgos Philotheou describes the collaboration between the department and the university. He cites the employment of University of Cyprus graduates as archaeological officers, the granting of permits for Maria Iacovou's excavations at Palaepaphos (Kouklia), Stella Demesticha's underwater project at the Mazotos shipwreck, and the field surveys of Lina Kassianidou and Athanasios Vionis, as well as the renovation of a house in Kouklia as a permanent base for the university's expedition. He notes the inclusion of the ARU's 2018 events in the European Year of Cultural Heritage, for which he is national coordinator, and closes with remarks on the pressures that post-crisis construction and development at places such as Yeroskipou place on rescue archaeology and monument scheduling.