Ljubljana, 6 March 2025 – Slovenia marks a major milestone in heritage science with a special event at the University of Ljubljana, celebrating the country’s latest investments in cutting-edge research facilities.
The €1.3 million investment in 2024 has enabled the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment, including advanced tools for Volatile Organic Compound analysis—crucial for preventive conservation—and a unique surface molecular scanner based on mass spectrometry, which provides high-resolution compositional images for a wide variety of heritage materials. In addition, partners of the Slovenian national node successfully secured further investments in 2025, for microscale CT scanning, XRF scanning, ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry, a specific detector for PIXE, and for macromolecular separation and analysis. This puts the node at the cutting edge of recent heritage science developments.
Beyond analytical techniques, the node recently secured a “large national research grant” for the development of the Slovenian Heritage Data Space, which ensures excellent support for its thriving digital, data and AI community working in the field of heritage science.
To mark this milestone, Dr. Vania Virgili, interim Director General of E-RIHS, has joined a dedicated event organized at the University of Ljubljana. On the occasion, Dr Virgili stressed the importance of E-RIHS as a collaborative, distributed infrastructure, for the development of the European Research Area in heritage science. Prior of the celebrating event, she also used the occasion to meet at Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia with local policy- and decision-makers, to explore the opportunities of closer collaboration within other European initiatives, such as the EU Partnership in Resilient Cultural Heritage and the Cultural Heritage Cloud.
