Excavating Europe’s last fascist monument: The Valley of the Fallen (Spain)

Since 1945, most fascist monuments have disappeared or been deactivated in Western Europe. There is one in Spain, however, that remains fully operative: the Valley of the Fallen. The complex, devised by the dictator Francisco Franco, celebrates the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), keeps the bodies of thousands of victims of the conflict, as well as the leading fascist ideologue and the dictator himself, and provides a material narrative that exalts the dictatorship. With the advent of democracy in 1978, the Valley remained unchanged, untouchable, and an important focus for fascist and extreme right celebrations, both national and international. However, with the new progressive government that came to power in 2018, it has become the object of an ambitious program of resignification in which archaeology has an important role to play. In this article, I describe how archaeological work undertaken at the Valley of the Fallen is contributing toward destabilizing the dictatorial narrative by opposing the monumental assemblage of fascism to the subaltern assemblage of those who built it.

Engineers of the Future: Student Training Program for the New Business Model

A major Russian oil company is currently carrying through an ambitious program aimed at transforming corporate E&P business model. The new model involving product-based approach to exploration and production will require young professionals with new skills and mindsets beyond regular university curricula. To proactively satisfy this demand, the company joined forces with one of its partner universities to champion Engineers of the Future, a training initiative aimed at senior students about to graduate and join the company. Engineers of the Future offer a fresh perspective and approach to training young professionals, mixing conventional training with problem-based and game-based learning to deliver a unique combination of hard and soft skills required by company's new operating paradigm. Program graduates are expected to make a great addition to corporate product teams, enabling the company to achieve its challenging strategic goals.

Central America under Spanish Colonial Rule

The Central American isthmus was under Spanish colonial rule for approximately three centuries (ca. 1502–1821). Known interchangeably as the kingdom, audiencia, or captaincy-general of Guatemala, the region occupied territory that would later become the republics of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, plus the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Unlike New Spain and Peru, Central America did not possess great mineral wealth, but its location between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans made it an important strategic asset. As did other parts of Spain’s overseas empire, Central America presented challenges of governance and defense. During the Habsburg era (to 1700), the colonial state took shape organically, drawing upon existing peninsular models within a framework of collaboration between the monarchy and local allies, including colonial and indigenous elites and the Roman Catholic Church. This system was not elegant, but it worked as long as authorities in Spain were willing to accept a degree of corruption and inefficiency in public administration. Under the Bourbons (1700–1821), Spain’s new rulers undertook an ambitious program of reforms meant to correct the weaknesses of the old system, while promoting economic growth, strengthening defenses, and enhancing revenues. Judged by their own standards, the Bourbon Reforms registered some successes, but they also bred disaffection. The eventual cost became apparent when the traditional allegiances forged in the Habsburg era dissolved under the pressure of constant warfare, and especially the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of Spain, which precipitated the empire-wide independence crisis.

Capability of Advanced Ultrasonic Inspection Technologies for Hydraulic Turbine Runners

This paper presents the results of a project aimed at evaluating the performance of ultrasonic techniques for detecting flaws in Francis turbine runners. This work is the first phase of a more ambitious program aimed at improving the reliability of inspection of critical areas in turbine runners. Francis runners may be utilized to supply power during peak periods, which means that they experience additional load stress associated with start and stop sequences. Inspection during manufacturing is then of paramount importance to remove as much as feasible all flaw initiation sites before the heat treatment. This phase one objective is to collect initial data on a simplified mock-up and then to compare the experimental ultrasonic data with the results of simulations performed by CIVA, a computer simulation package. The area of interest is the region with the highest stress between the blade and the web. A welded T-joint coupon made of UNS S41500 was manufactured to represent this high-stress area. During the FCAW welding process, ceramic beads were embedded in the weld to create discontinuities whose size is in the critical range to initiate a crack. Inspection of the material was carried out by various nondestructive testing (NDT) methods namely conventional pulse-echo, phased array, total focusing method (TFM). With these results, detection rates were obtained in order to compare the effectiveness of each method.

Teaching Forensic Science to the American Police and Public: The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, 1929-1938

Established in 1929, Northwestern University’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL), America’s first independent forensic crime laboratory, undertook a wide range of scientific case work during the 1930s, including toxicology, firearms identification, polygraph testing, the analysis of questioned documents and bacteriology; its mission being to provide Chicago with a world-class forensic science service. Alongside this mission, however, a key ambition of the SCDL’s founders was to forensically educate police officers, legal professionals, and the general public. Convinced that American police were largely ignorant of scientific aids to crime detection and that the public’s lack of forensic awareness led to the destruction and contamination of crime scenes, the SCDL attempted to fashion itself as a “school for manhunters.” But, while the laboratory’s ambitious program of public talks, scientific demonstrations, detective schools, expositions, and radio programs were intended to foster the creation of both a scientifically savvy public and policemen on par with those to be found in Europe, the SCDL encountered a number of significant hurdles to achieving these goals, including the hostility of some high-ranking police officials.

Soils training and research: Who's legacy?

<p>Soils Training and Research Studentships (STARS) is a NERC and BBSRC funded Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT).  The consortium comprises of four universities and four research institutes from around England, Scotland and Wales who are collaborating to offer training to PhD students in soil science. The program offered forty PhD studentships over four cohorts, which started in 2016 and due to complete in 2022. The ambitious program aimed to address the under representation of soil science and graduates in UK higher education institutes.</p><p>The comprehensive CDT supports cross-institute participation which allows a sharing of resources both human and physical promoting a cross-disciplinary research environment. Students have received group training from experts across the respective establishments encouraging inter-institute collaboration and support. Centralised funding has supported a range of outside training from motion graphic skills to clowning in public to genomics and statistics and the production of video media products by students and staff communicating their research and knowledge. In addition, the managerial structure at STARS has allowed for easy access to professional and industry placements for students. By building upon the traditional PhD experience, STARS has been able to facilitate not only quality doctoral research but also graduates with the skill set and networks required by the next generation of soils scientists to help achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.</p><p>Collectively, the STARS consortium has amassed a vast range of soils research, knowledge, skills and training resources. To remain ambitious and forward focused our legacy project will bring together these resources and continue to work to build on the relationships forged under STARS and into the broader soil community.   These resources will be accessible to those outside of STARS and outside of the research community because resources that offer the tools to support healthy soils, clean water, access to healthy food is not our legacy, it is everyone’s.  The legacy we are left with will not only be comprised of our journal publications but our success in sharing our knowledge, translating our findings and being active participants in global dialogues.</p>

Doing Away With Empire

The chapter examines how the transformations in the Bulgarian cities and countryside affected the Muslims and their institutions. From the first years of its establishment Bulgaria embarked upon an ambitious program of urban development whose goal was to do away with the vestiges of Ottoman imperial presence and bring the appearance of Bulgarian cities in line with European models. But these efforts were not targeting defunct institutions or obsolete practices; in reality, they affected Muslims and their institutions. In the countryside one of the most notable developments was the transfer of considerable amount of land from Muslim into Bulgarian hands. The chapter concludes with a discussion of public health measures, particularly those related to Muslim pilgrimage. These policies produced a sense of crisis among the local Muslims and in turn, they acted as a catalyst for the emergence of reform initiatives.

The role of the committee of the regions (Cor) to implement the Green Deal at the local level: an overview of Italy

<abstract> <p>The contribution focuses on the role of cities in the implementation of the so-called Green Deal, the ambitious program proposed by the European Commission, in accordance with the objectives set by the Paris Agreements, to implement the use of clean energy resources, favour the circular economy, restore biodiversity and reduce pollution. The Plan, which for the seven-year period 2021-2027 has a budget of economic resources of 100 billion Euro, aims to involve in transcalar perspective all territorial and administrative levels of the Member States and thus contribute to the achievement, in 2050, of climate neutrality. The main objective of the work is then to concentrate, with descriptive intent, on the policies that, in Italy, are being activated at local level in coherence with the European perspectives. In particular, reference will be made to the initiatives proposed and sponsored in Italy by the Committee of the Regions of which a critical overview is proposed. A further reflection will be dedicated to how digital innovation is called to support the macro-policies of energy transition in the EU.</p> </abstract>

Sangallo, Vignola, Palladio and the Roman «Accademia de lo Studio de l’Architettura».

Bernd Kulawik is a trained marine engineer who studied physics, musicology and philosophy at the Technical Universities of Dresden and Berlin. MA thesis in 1996 about Monteverdi’s «Seconda Pratica». PhD in 2002 with a dissertation about drawings in the Berlin «Codex Destailleur D» for Antonio da Sangallo the Younger’s last project for St. Peter’s in Rome. Since 1988 he worked in research libraries and institutes in Berlin, Rome, Berne, Einsiedeln and Zurich, mostly as developer for database projects. Since 2013 he could take up his research about the study of ancient architecture in Renaissance Rome which led to the rediscovery of the forgotten «Accademia de lo Studio de l’Architettura». This academy almost completely realised Claudio Tolomei’s ambitious program from 1542 formerly believed to be unrealisable. Other research interests are the history of philosophy, Renaissance music and the epistemic and technical preconditions as well as long-time perspectives of the Digital Humanities.

Internationalisation as a Long-Term Strategic Project of the Post-War Renewal of the Yugoslav Archaeology (1950–1971)

Archaeology in the countries which belonged to Yugoslavia (1918–1991) was mosaic of different traditions. The development of archaeology was greatly affected by political changes in the last 150 years; all of them required significant re-contextualisation of the discipline and its practice. The renewal of archaeology after the Second World War, in the context of Socialist Yugoslavia, acted on both levels, in building-up the existing national (republican) archaeological disciplinary frameworks, and in forging ‘new’ common Yugoslav archaeology. Key role in this process played the Archaeological Society of Yugoslavia, established in 1950 as the principal coordinating scholarly organisation in the country. The Society’s immediate task was to create conditions for the cooperation of all archaeologists in the country, including the international promotion of the (new) Yugoslav archaeology. Despite having less than 100 archaeologists in the 1950s, the Society designed very ambitious program of ‘internationalisation’ (e.g. exchange of publications, participation at the international conferences, grants, invitation to foreign scholars, special publications published exclusively in foreign languages etc.) which proved highly successful in a very short time. The peak of these endeavours was participation at the 1st International Congress of Slavic Archaeology in Warsaw (1965) and organisation of the 8th Congress of the UISPP in Belgrade (1971); the event which could not be organised without intensive promotion and networking of the Yugoslav archaeologists in the international academic arena in the 1950s and 1960s.