The 18th meeting of the members of the UNIVERSEUM Network for European Academic Heritage was organised and hosted by the University of Belgrade in Serbia. This year’s main theme was “Mobility of University Heritage” and representatives of University museums and academic collections from 18 countries attended the meeting. The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens was represented by its History Museum with Evangelos Papoulias, Elena Kitta and Myrsini Pichou and by the Faculty of History and Archaeology with Marlen Mouliou, Lecturer in Museology.
The first session of the Meeting included papers under the theme “Architectural Heritage, Recent Buildings and Large Installations” and E. Kitta, E. Papoulias and M. Pichou presented the paper «Α home to house a museum: history of the building». The first afternoon session, chaired by M. Mouliou, entitled «Human remains in university collections»included several short papers and long discussion. The first day concluded with the presentation of 24 posters.
In the session of the second day entitled “Mobility of University Heritage”, Marlen Mouliou presented the paper “Systems thinking and the mobility of university museum collections; tracing connecting threads”. The paper “Digital Stories: a challenge for the Athens University History Museum” was presented by M. Pichou, E. Papoulias and E. Kitta at the session of the “Digital Initiatives” working group. On the same day, the meeting’s participants visited the Museums of Chemistry and Mineralogy, the Archaeology collection, the collection of Psychological Instruments and the Botanical Garden of the University of Belgrade.
On the third and final day of the Meeting, the General Assembly was realised with the Elections for the Executive Committee for the period 2017 – 2020. Marlen Mouliou was elected Vice President of the newly elected Executive Committee and this is the first time a representative of Greece is selected in the UNIVERSEUM Board. It is noted, however, that Marlen Mouliou has already served interim Vice-President of UNIVERSEUM from July 2016 up to the current elections after the position was made vacant due to Μarta Lourenço’s (Deputy Director of the University Museums in Lisbon) resignation to become President of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) – University Museum and Collections (UMAC).
