SHORT BIO:

Špela Spanžel was born in 1976 in Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia. After graduating in Art History at Ljubljana University in 2000, she has enrolled a postgraduate study at Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis - Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities. In 2003, she was appointed assistant in the study programme of the Historical Anthropology of Art and is currently preparing a PhD thesis on the subject of representations of learned women in the painting of the High and Late Middle Ages.

Her professional activities are closely linked to the cultural heritage field; for couple of years she worked in the Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec and passed the test for civil servants in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Since 2002 she has been participating in the Heritage Information Network, a permanent information system gathering governmental services in charge of heritage protection within the Council of Europe. She is a member of an expert group creating a multilingual on-line Thesaurus on cultural heritage. In 2006, she also carried out a traineeship at the Council of Europe, at the Directorate of Culture and Cultural and Natural Heritage. Currently, she is employed in the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia; her working areas include co-ordination of executive acts according to the new heritage legislation and other tasks related to heritage and culture within EU institutions and other international organisations.

Ms Spanžel was, in previous years, also active in non-governmental field. She was elected Council member of Europa Nostra, the pan-European Federation for Cultural Heritage in 2006. On behalf of the organisation she has since participated various international seminars, workshops and forums.

She lives and works in Ljubljana.

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