News and Events

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The unit, set up by DA Cyrus Vance in 2017, is the first of its type and was created to deal with the increase in looted antiquities that are flooding the art market in New York, mostly as a result of conflicts in the Middle East.
 

The M.A. Cultural Heritage Students took their first fieldtrip of the semester to the historic Umbrian hilltop town of Amelia on Monday September 16, 2019.

Rome has recently been the victim of numerous incidents of fallen trees across the capital, causing costly damage and creating serious hazards.

AUR is very happy to congratulate Anjum Malik (M.A. Sustainable Cultural Heritage 2019) on her newly appointed position with the Pakistan Higher Education Commission (HEC) as special assistant to the Chairman, Dr. Tariq Banuri.

Barbara Nazzaro is an architect and serves as technical director of the Colosseum. She began the tour with a summary of the nearly 2,000-year history of the amphitheater.

Italy’s most iconic monuments have no end of surprises, as AUR students learned during summer excavations at the Colosseum and Imperial Fora.

AUR students learned how to protect themselves and great works of art in a seminar led by Dick Drent, former security director at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and an expert on anti-terrorism and criminal profiling. To practice their skills, students went on a stealth mission at a local museum.

“I guarantee after today, you will never walk into a museum without looking at how easy it was to come in and how to escape,” said Drent, whose company, OmniRisk, advises curators and professionals at museums and heritage sites on how to protect their valuables -- and visitors.

Art and relics are under siege these days – stolen by terrorists to fund their activities or the mafia to use as a commodity or ransom for lower prison sentences. In recent years, visitors at museums and cultural sites have also been killed by suicidal gunmen and hostage takers.  

In this environment, everyone needs to be on guard.

The jury highly commended “the European cooperation between the Italian conservation experts and the Greek Orthodox Monastery which was undertaken in close consultation with the Egyptian authorities and has resulted in high-quality conservation work on an element of such an outstanding World Heritage Site as the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai. The documentation and quality of the work are exceptional”.

On 6 Feb 2018, Dr. Peter Campbell presented 'Fishers, Divers, and Scientists: Engaging Communities in Underwater Cultural Heritage'. This is a video of his presentation on the evening.

This is an excerpt from an article by Lia Schifitto that is based on her M.A. Thesis. Lia Schifitto is now a heritage preservationist from Upstate New York but has lived across Tuscany, Rome, and Toronto. She currently is working for Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Lia earned her M.A. at the American University of Rome, studying Sustainable Cultural Heritage. She completed her BA at the University of Toronto, specializing in American and Soviet Cultural History.