Key-note speakers
Dr. Veronique Vergès Belmin
Laboratoire Recherche Monuments Historiques, France
Dr. Geol. Véronique Vergès-Belmin has a 32 years experience as a conservation scientist in the Laboratoire de Recherche des Monuments Historiques (CNRS USR 3224), an institution from the Ministry of Culture in France. She is head of its Stone scientific department. Her activity is threefold: (i) Assistance to architects, curators and restorers in charge of listed monuments, (ii) Research on products and methods for stone conservation, (iii) Teaching at Paris-Sorbonne and Créteil universities, Institut National du Patrimoine and Ecole de Chaillot. She is regularly asked to give lectures abroad. She coordinated the elaboration of the ISCS Illustrated Glossary on Stone Deterioration Patterns as part of her activity as general secretary and head of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee for Stone (2000-2008).
Prof. dr. Heather Viles
University of Oxford, UK
Heather Viles is Professor of Biogeomorphology and Heritage Conservation, and Associate Head (Research) for the Social Sciences Division, in the University of Oxford. She is currently President of the British Society for Geomorphology. Heather did her doctoral research in the 1980s on cyanobacterial weathering of limestone in the tropics, before carrying out post-doctoral research on acid rain and the weathering of limestone cathedrals. She now runs OxRBL – the Oxford Resilient Buildings and Landscapes Laboratory – a highly interdisciplinary research group which focuses on a wide range of topics related to the deterioration and conservation of stone and other materials, including salt weathering. She was awarded the 2015 Ralph Alger Bagnold Medal, European Geosciences Union, in recognition of ‘outstanding scientific contribution to the study of geomorphology’, the 2019 Melvin G Marcus lifetime career award, Geomorphology Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers, and the 2020 Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (for establishing the field of biogeomorphology).