Cooperating to preserve Jordan's rich cultural heritage
Small-scale income-generating research projects in the field of antiquities should be established in Jordan, the final conference of the EU-funded JOCHERA project has heard. This will help achieve future research goals shared by European and Jordanian universities and research centres. Conference participants also stressed the need to establish working relationships between research centres, and to carry on working in a manner that does not cause damage to important historical and archaeological sites. Indeed, this was a key objective of the two-year JOCHERA (Jordan Conservation of Cultural Heritage in ERA) project; to reinforce the position of both the University of Jordan and the Hamdi Mango Center for Scientific Research (HMCSR) in their ability to cooperate in cultural heritage protection research. The University currently offers 63 international programmes at undergraduate level, and 130 international programmes at graduate level. HMCSR is a specialist research centre within the university. JOCHERA has been important in increasing the capacity building of researchers involved in the conservation of cultural heritage. The project, which began in 2011, was carried out in the context of the European Research Area, with the intention of developing a conservation centre of excellence in response to Jordan's socio-economic needs. In addition to reinforcing cooperation capacities through targeted trainings for research management, the project also encouraged the involvement of those local cultural heritage professionals in future strategy formulation. In the long term, this will strengthen the connections, skills and scientific capabilities of existing laboratories at the University of Jordan. This will enable the greater involvement of Jordanian researchers in future projects funded by the EU. This is especially timely, given the impending launch of the Horizon 2020 funding programme. The final conference also examined the results achieved during the project, reviewed strengths and weaknesses of current research infrastructure and presented a video to demonstrate what has already been achieved. The JOCHERA consortium brought together five organisations: one from Jordan, three from EU Member States (Italy and Spain) and one from a candidate country (Turkey). The project received EU funding amounting to EUR 499 614.For more information, please visit: JOCHERA http://www.jochera.eu/ Project factsheet
Countries
Italy