How are artefacts from the past brought to life?
Our “Blended Intense Project Week” at the American University of Beirut – Mediterranean in Paphos, Cyprus, with students from the Brandenburg University of Technology and the University of Tallinn under the direction of Prof. Julia Schnitzer (THB & UNESCO Chair Digitalisation of Cultural Heritage in Crisis-affected Regions in Middle East and North Africa), Assistant Professor Zinon Zinonos (AUBM), Prof. Matti Mötus (TLU) and Christoph Luchs (THB) launched projects on the digitisation of cultural heritage for the Archeological Museum in Paphos.
International teams from 12 nations developed the first ideas and prototypes that focussed on the artefacts and their stories. Photogrammetry and 3D scans with apps like Polycam are central methods for digitising sculptures or environments such as the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Grambs of the Kings”. Many thanks to the American University of Beirut – Mediterranean as well as to the head of the department Prof. Dr. Malek Tabbal and his team for the hospitality!
During the trip at the end of April 2026, the students also visited the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in Limassol and were finalised by Prof. Dr. Evangelos Karapanos welcomed at the university’s own radio station CUT.fm. A radio program is broadcast from here and podcasts are produced in parallel. A tour through the city centre of Limassol and the locations of the CUT showed how closely the city and the university are connected.
We continued to the Institute MNENOSYNE of Prof. Dr. Marinos Ionannidis (UNSECO Chair of Cultural Heritage Cyprus). With a lecture on ongoing projects and the intensive and comprehensive way of working in the digitisation of large antique building complexes or numerous artefacts of the culture of Cyprus, among others, Sweden, he showed the students how extensive and interdisciplinary the work is.
The students were familiarised with the topics of photogrammetry and 3D scanning in several online courses by the lecturer Christoph Luchs, they also received instructions for the historical places in Cyprus and the topic of international project management in order to independently develop concepts in the groups, to make recordings and to process the data. The interim results were presented at the end of the project week and completed online in groups for the final presentation.