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.

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.