Gemma Domènech i Casadevall, new director of the Catalan Institute for Cultural Heritage Research

She will succeed Joaquim Nadal, who will remain as a seconded researcher.

The Board of Trustees of the Catalan Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (ICRPC) has appointed Gemma Domènech i Casadevall as the new director of the centre, at a meeting held on Tuesday 27 September in which representatives of the Generalitat de Catalunya Ministry of Research and Universities and Ministry of Culture and the University of Girona (UdG) took part as Institute trustees. Domènech, a researcher at the ICRPC since 2009, holds a PhD in Art History, teaches Museology and Heritage at the UdG, and has written over a hundred publications specialising in the uses of heritage and memory. Between 2019 and 2021 she was the Generalitat de Catalunya Director General for Democratic Memory.

The appointment follows an international selection process coordinated by the CERCA Institute, with the participation of the ICRPC’s External Scientific Advisory Board. Gemma Domènech will be the third director of the centre, succeeding Dr Joaquim Nadal i Farreras, who has completed his term of office and will stay on as a researcher attached to the ICRPC, and Dr Gabriel Alcalde, the founding director.

Dr Gemma Domènech

The ICRPC, created in 2006 by the Generalitat de Catalunya and the University of Girona, is part of the CERCA Institute and promotes and implements basic research, transfer, training and socialisation of knowledge, to provide society with the elements of analysis of its heritage and its current and future social relations. Domènech will be one of the four women directors at the 41 CERCA research centres in Catalonia.

 The ICRPC would like to thank Dr Joaquim Nadal for the great work he has done in his eight years leading the centre.

CERCA delegation to visit Finland

The aim of the trip is to establish partnerships and new projects with R&D institutions in the country.

From Tuesday to Friday, a delegation of centres led by Lluís Rovira, director of CERCA, will visit different research and innovation bodies associated with the Finnish Government.

The Catalan delegation, made up of directors and researchers from Agrotecnio, the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE), the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), the Forestry Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) and members of the Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda will meet on Wednesday with representatives from the Natural Resources Institute of Finland (LUKE), the Institute for the Environment (SYKE) and a delegation from the University of Lapland and the Geology and Mining Institute (GTK). On Thursday, they will attend a reception at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and will meet with the European Forest Institute (EFI), the Centre for Research and Technology (VTT), the GTK, Business Finland and the Finnish Research Academy.

The meetings, all of them with a high technical and institutional content, are expected to raise awareness of the importance of the research activity conducted by the participating centres, as well as the Catalan research and innovation ecosystem, which seeks to become a benchmark in Europe.

The trip is part of the agreement signed between the CERCA centres and LUKE last March, through which the CERCA Institute seeks to open up the research and innovation potential of the Catalan system of centres to potential new partners with whom there is currently little or no relationship. The visit is also expected to open the door to new partnerships between institutions for the next European Commission calls for proposals in 2023 and 2024.