Museums are frequent employers of graduates in archaeology and other heritage disciplines. Aside from management, the museum staff is normally composed of two different profiles of experts: staff working in the domain of communication, presentation and dissemination of cultural heritage (domain of ‘public heritage’) and staff working on keeping, physical protection, and research of museum objects (domain of ‘museograpahy’). In both domains, STEM sciences can provide a significant contribution. The intensive course will be dedicated to both topics.
Museography: teaching of methods and techniques in museum materials (e.g. objects like pottery, stone objects etc.) will include major aspects of preliminary elaboration (physical protection) of objects and their further processing in terms of analyses of their structure, raw materials, state of preservation, reconstructive potential and requirements, production technology, use-wear analysis. This part of the course will be taught in the laboratories (‘conservation workshops’) of the Belgrade National Museum in Kladovo, predominantly by the expert staff of the museum assisted with experts from other partners (Universities of Belgrade, Ljubljana, and Zagreb). The principal goal is to teach students how to museographically handle the materials (i.e. museum objects), provide their long-term physical protection and structural stability, adequately record the objects, and to perform analyses for a more detailed understanding of the object’s physical/material characteristics.
Museum communication: The aim is to train students in major issues and concepts in museum communication and presentation of cultural heritage. Here the role of STEM sciences is mostly in exploring the potentials of modern digital techniques of presentation (Virtual reality, 3D modeling, virtual reconstructions, enhanced reality etc.). Various cases of such museum presentations will be presented to the students, and their potential thoroughly analysed and discussed. This part of the course will be taught by the museological experts from the Belgrade National Museum assisted by the experts from the Universities of Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, and Sarajevo.
The course will also take the advantage that near its venues is the Roman site of Diana (military and civil settlement on the Roman limes). This site has been extensively researched in the past, and parts of it reconstructed for the presentation purposes. The site will serve as a training polygon for discussion on issues of presentation of heritage in the form of open-air parks. One of the tasks the students would have to accomplish will be making a small exhibition on the topic related to this course.