The Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly is organising its fourth Summer School in Tzoumerka, in collaboration with the Historical and Folklore Society of Tzoumerka and the North Tzoumerka Association for the Protection of Arachthos. The summer school will be held 22-27 August 2016 in North Tzoumerka, an impressive mountainous area deeply intertwined with the flow of the River Arachthos, located within the extended municipality of Ioannina in Epirus, Greece.
The Summer School is aimed at graduate students, doctoral students and senior undergraduate students from the wider field of social and humanities. This year’s theme is “Water as a physical and sociocultural resource” and MedINA who has carried out innovative work in this general field has been invited to present some examples of its work. Angeliki Foutri, member of MedINA’s scientific secretariat, will make two presentations to the summer school participants – “The cultural values of wetlands as a means for their wise use: The Ramsar Convention and examples from the Mediterranean” and “The Vjosa / Aoos River Ecomuseum: Promoting and protecting nature and culture”.
The main thematic axes to be developed in the Summer School are: the natural / ecological framework like the water cycle, wetlands etc, Water and production systems, the “culture of water” and Leisure and tourism. MedINA’s presentations will contribute to the development of the third and fourth thematic axes.
It is worth mentioning that this year’s summer school is dedicated to the Bridge of Plaka, one of the most impressive bridges in Epirus, which was destroyed in 2015 by extreme rainfall. The bridge, built in 1886 over the River of Arachthos, was the largest single arched bridge in the Balkans and the third largest in Europe.
The poster for the 4th Tzoumerka Summer School