The Heritage Science Lab Ljubljana is excited to announce a new highly interdisciplinary project funded by the University of Ljubljana titled MATRES – Material Resilience in Times of Environmental and Social Change.
In collaboration with teams at the Faculty of Arts (coordinator: prof. dr. Matija Črešnar), the Biotechnical Faculty and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering ) we will be addressing key societal challenges arising from environmental and social change by studying the material world. The project focuses on resilience, defined as the ability of societies to resist, adapt, recover and even transform in response to external shocks, pressures and challenges.
The project brings together an large group of researchers including teams from other Slovenian partners (e.g. Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, National Museum of Slovenia, Jožef Stefan Institute) and international collaborators (e.g. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, University College London, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology).
Unlike many studies that focus only on ecological or economic aspects, MATRES examines resilience through a broad and integrated approach that includes landscapes, materials, human bodies, and digital technologies. These components form tangible and intangible elements of the human experience that have shaped societies’ responses to events such as climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, economic crises, political upheavals, and social upheaval throughout history.
One of the key objectives is to link environmental data with archaeological and historical sources. This will allow us to reconstruct past environments and reveal how human societies have adapted and changed in local, regional and wider spaces. In addition, the project treats landscapes as dynamic, interconnected systems of man and the environment, offering valuable insights into long-term social and environmental change.
The project examines materials – from natural resources to cultural objects – as carriers of social, cultural and technological significance and traces of their use, valuation and transformation over time. It treats human bodies as biological entities in ecosystems as well as cultural constructs that reflect resilience and adaptability.
A key innovation of the project is the development of a digital twin – an advanced virtual model that combines databases, computer simulations and visualizations. Such infrastructure supports hypothesis testing, scenario planning and decision-making for sustainable cultural heritage management and spatial planning, making research results practical and useful.
The project will run from 1 Nov 2025 to 31 Oct 2030 (budget: 2.275M€).
For more information please see here (in Slovenian).
Photo credit: K. Predovnik
