MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY EUROPEAN NETWORK OF CULTURAL ADMINISTRATION TRAINING CENTRES

Sophia Labadi is the winner of the Cultural Policy Research Award 2008!

Dr. Sophia Labadi, a young French international expert on cultural heritage and cultural diversity, is the winner of the Cultural Policy Research Award 2008.

This outstanding award, conferred in Lyon last October 16th at the occasion of the European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres International Conference "Intercultural Dialogue and Project Management: New training programmes in a context of major challenges", is worth €10,000. The prize was awarded jointly by the European Cultural Foundation, the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in partnership with the European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres, ENCATC.

This Award scheme was jointly launched by the European Cultural Foundation, and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in 2004 to stimulate academic research in the cultural policy field and to assist cultural policymaking by offering possible policy solutions to the cultural issues it analyses. A long-term goal is the development of a network of young cultural policy scholars.

The winner 2008 has been selected by an international professional jury that featured Milena Dragicevic Sesic (Serbia) as president of the Jury, Ritva Mitchell (Finland), Lluis Bonet (Spain), Veronika Ratzenböck (Austria), Michael W. Quine (UK), Jacques Bonniel (France) and Mikko Lagerspetz (Estonia).

The project of research submitted by the French young expert is entitled “Measuring the socioeconomic impacts of regenerated heritage sites characterised by a high degree of cultural diversity” and shows, according to the jury, a “high level of academic writing” and is “very acute on heritage policy and its background”. It aims firstly to measure and analyse the socio-economic impacts of the regeneration of cultural heritage sites characterised by a high degree of cultural diversity; and secondly to highlight sound practices that maximize the social and economic impacts of regeneration projects, in particular those that protect and enhance efficiently cultural diversity. These practices would be identified through in-depth European transnational quantitative and qualitative comparative analyses; thirdly to make recommendations for improving the potential social and economic impacts of regenerated sites and for enhancing cultural diversity and social cohesion. These recommendations will be based on the transnational comparative analyses. The case studies will be selected because they are characterised by a high degree of cultural diversity in their population, they used to be socially and economically deprived and have been regenerated through their heritage.

Sophia has worked for most of the key international heritage organisations such as UNESCO, the Getty Foundation or ICOMOS. Her personal history – her parents are Algerian migrants to France - has made her acutely aware of and interested in the complex issues related to cultural diversity and social cohesion. She has tackled the issue of the evaluation of the impacts of heritage projects during her PhD, her work at UNESCO and other research projects.

This year a total of twenty applications from ten different countries were received and assessed by the independent jury.

More information?
Interested in applying for 2009?
Please visit regularly our website www.encatc.org
or contact Rosa DIAZ DOMINGUEZ , communications@encatc.org