Advisory Board

The SKIVRE team was supported by National Advisors who shared their outstanding expertise with the team and supported the SKIVRE objectives:

Germany:

Martin Erdmann / Manufactum

Manufactum GmbH & Co. KG is a German retailer with nine full-sized stores in Germany and an online store that serves primarily Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the UK. The main focus of the company are household and garden goods made with traditional manufacturing methods (thus “Manufactum”) and materials. Martin Erdmann manages the “Gutes aus Klöstern” catalogue of Manufactum since the very beginning in 2000. He drafted the overall idea of bringing monastic products to a market and is still responsible for choosing adequate products for the Manufactum product range. Currently, the catalogue offers more than 400 products from 65 European monasteries. He is an expert in developing monastic products and is very well informed about legal regulations in market transfer. 

https://www.manufactum.de/klosterprodukte-gutes-aus-kloestern-c195077/

Stefan Beier / Klosterland e.V. (Germany-Poland)

KLOSTERLAND e.V. is a non-profit association, founded in 2013 by the partners of the German-Polish Klosterland Monastery Network. Its purpose is to establish internal and cross-border collaboration and to support the preservation and reactivation of monastic heritage. The association is the trans-regional point of contact for former and active monasteries, their nearby towns and surrounding regions, and their (cultural) touristic target audiences. Under the umbrella brand KLOSTERLAND, member monasteries showcase their individual events, as well as network offerings such as markets, events, informational media, shops and much more. Mr Stefan Beier is director of Klosterland association.

www.klosterland.de

Bulgaria:

Boris Dimitrov / CheckPoint Cardio OOD

Mr Dimitriv is a business expert and chairman and co-owner of “Bulgaria-K” JSC, who became the biggest production company for hand-knitting and hobby textile products in Southeast Europe and one of the largest supplier on the EU market – 1997 – present. Developed and established the industrial production of the high-end textile brands Prada, Emanuel Ungaro, Armani, Missoni, Trussardi etc in Bulgaria with more than 18 years successfully operating production lines till today. Strong background in industrial management, product development, building international distribution networks, team building and coordination of corporate activities from supplier to the customer, strategic planning and execution. Bringing a product from a drawing board to the customers hands. Assistant professor of clinical, behavioural and organisational psychology till 1999 in the team of prof. Poli Petkova at Sofia State University.

https://www.checkpointcardio.com

Belgium:

Jan Jaspers / Centrum voor Religieuze Kunst en Cultuur vzw (CRKC)

Jan Jaspers (°1951) studied Social Education at the Catholic University of Leuven (BE). After a long career as programmer and director in different professional arts organizations (Cultural Centers, Flanders Festival, different classical orchestras and music ensembles, Flanders Music Centre) and a position as advisor to the Flemish ministers of culture, he switched to the heritage field and started in 2012 the new department of immovable religious heritage within the Center for Religious Art and Culture (CRKC-PARCUM). This department assists and advises the church committees and communal administrations in the Flemish region regarding the care for these buildings and the actual and future use of parish churches, from valorization to reuse. He retired from this position in December 2018.

He is a member of the Flemish Commission of Immovable Heritage (VCOE) as specialist in religious heritage and advises the Flemish government about the protection of monuments and sites in the Region of Flanders. He is the secretary of the Episcopal Commission of Religious Heritage of the Diocese of Hasselt (BE), president of the church fabric of the Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren (BE), member of the board of the Flanders Festival and active member of the European network: Future for Religious Heritage.

Greece:

Prof. Sotirios Despotis / National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Dr. Sotirios Despotis is Professor of the Faculty of Social Theology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He is, among others:

▪    Supervisor for the Erasmus Program at the Faculty of Social Theology, University of Athens.
▪    Member of the Churches Council (ACK) of the state of Essen
▪    Module Coordinator of “Orthodoxy in the 20th Century” – Hellenic Open University 2004-2016 (Distance Learning for Adults)
▪    Collaboration with the Department of Economics (University of Athens) in the project “Economy and Religious Organizations”
▪    EU appointed expert in Horizon 2020 (Ethics and Research Integrity Sector)
▪    Coordinator of ACORDES, “Actions for Cultural Openness and Inter-Religious Understanding in European Societies”, in the research framework CULT-COOP-05-2017: Religious diversity in Europe – past, present and future. Members include: The World Council of Churches, and prominent research institutions.

http://www.soctheol.uoa.gr/p/w/sotdespo.html