This edited volume is the final output of a three-year research project entitled ‘The Right to Cultural Heritage – Its Protection and Enforcement through Cooperation in the European Union’ (HEURIGHT14), which was financed under the EU’s Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage and Global Change ‘Heritage PLUS’ (jpi ch). We would like to also acknowledge the support offered by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections (Poland), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom), the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Italy), the European Commission, and the Coordination Office of the jpi ch. We are particularly grateful to all the institutional members of the project’s consortium: the University of Fine Arts in Poznań; the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London; the Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies of the University of Trieste; and two research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw – the Institute of Law Studies and the Institute of Art. Our thanks also go to Dušan Nikolić, Rector of the University of Novi Sad, and all the Associated Partners to the project for their unfailing support.
There are a number of additional individuals to whom we owe a special debt of gratitude. We would thus especially thank Matteo Rosati, Mauro Bussani, Roger O’Keefe, Damien Helly, and Diego Marani for their encouragement and invaluable advice and suggestions, all of which helped shape the present volume. We are also very grateful to Krzysztof Pomian for having contributed to this volume with his thoughtful Foreword. Of course, our most sincere gratitude goes to the Chapters’ authors, who contributed their time and expertise to this book. Every contributor adds a layer of practical experience and expertise, which renders this collection particularly rich in different perspectives.
We are all indebted to James F. Hartzell, J.D., for his much-appreciated language revisions of the volume and to Aleksandra Zych for her meticulous edits. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance rendered by Magdalena Szymańska, Patricia Ambrose, Roberto Ferrarato, as well as the research assistance of Camila Adach, Michele D’Addetta, Julia Krzesicka, and Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott. Without them, this book would not have become a reality. Our special thanks also go out to Siegfried Wiessner, the Editor-in-Chief of the Studies in Intercultural Human Rights, and Lindy Melman, Bea Timmer,
Last but not least, we would like to thank Diego, Ewa, Irenka, James, Jonathan and Leone along with Andrea, for their loving patience and understanding.
The Editors