Mr Robert DAVIES

Education: He holds a BA in European Literature and History (with Scandinavian languages) from the University of East Anglia (1974) and an MA in Library and Information Science at Ealing Technical College/Thames Valley University (1976).

Professional background: Following a 14 year career with the British Council, working on several continents, Rob has over 25 years of continuous experience in EU-funded RFP and other projects, initiating, leading and participating in over 40 projects as CEO of a specialist organisation. He has carried out consultancy and research assignments in the education sector all over the world for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Development Fund, Overseas Development Agency (ODA) and UK Know‐How Fund for Central and Eastern Europe. Between 2007-2014 he was a major contributor to the Europeana initiative, leading and participating in several Best Practice Networks and similar actions with budgets in the range 3-4 million EUR and consortia of 20+ partners representing most EU member states including: EuropeanaLocal (ECP-2007-DILI-517009), LoCloud (CIP 325099) and  3D-ICONS (GA:297194), CARARE (CIP 250445 – archaeology, architecture and built heritage). He is currently a member (and Co-Chair elect) of the Management Board of the Europeana Network Association and has just completed a study as a CUT staff member, under the Europeana Common Culture project on the landscape of digital heritage crowdsourcing activities in Europe. He joined the Digital Heritage Research Laboratory at Cyprus University of Technology in 2016. From 2016-2019 he was Project Manager of the ViMM Coordination and Support Action which helped define EU policy toward the use of ICT in cultural heritage, also contributing to the awards to DHRLab of the Chairs in Digital Heritage of UNESCO and the European Research Area (the 5-year Mnemosyne project under Horizon 2020). Currently he is a member of the team running the EU ‘Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage’ which CUT leads.

Research: ICT in Digital Cultural Heritage, Holistic documentation in 3D digitisation, crowdsourcing and User Generated content/metadata in Cultural Heritage, Impact Assessment in Cultural Heritage, Science Literacy. Public Sector Information and Open Data.

Selected publications:

1. Davies, R. Crowdsourcing in Cultural Heritage. Europeana Foundation, 2021.
2. Davies, R., and Ioannides, M. Towards a Holistic Documentation and Wider Use of Digital Cultural Heritage. In: Garoufallou E., Sartori F., Siatri R., Zervas M. (eds) Metadata and Semantic Research. MTSR 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 846. Springer, Cham https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14401-2_7.
3. Ioannides, M., Fritsch, D.,Leissner, J., Davies, R., Remondino, F., Caffo, R., Progress in Cultural Heritage Preservation: 4th International Conference Proceedings of EuroMed Conference, 2012.
4. Ioannides, M., Davies, R., Chatzigrigoriou, P., Athanasiou, V.,  3D Digital Libraries and Their Contribution in the Documentation of the Past. Springer,l 2017 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49607-8_6 In book: Mixed Reality and Gamification for Cultural Heritage.
5. World Bank. 2016. World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0671-1.
6. Minges,M.,K., Beschorner,N., Davies, R., Zhang, G.,Information and Communications in the Chinese Countryside: A Study of Three Provinces.World Bank Study, 2012. ISBN-10: 1464802041 
7. Economic and social impact of the public domain in the information society. EU cultural institutions and the PSI directive – Study, Directorate-General for the Information Society and Media (European Commission), 2014 
8. Namibia: Supporting Societies’ Needs: a Model Framework for Developing Library Policy. Namibia in a Knowledge Based Economy: a renewed policy towards Vision 2030, 2011.