Virginia Santamarina

Dr. Virginia Santamarina. Fine Arts Degree at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain, 1999. She has been visiting researcher in Italy and Mexico. Her specialisation is related to Conservation and Restoration of Mural Art, and she received the National Award from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports for her final dissertation. She obtained her master’s degree in Internet – Intranet Programming, UPV (2001) and her PhD in Conservation and Restoration of the Historic-Artistic Heritage, UPV (2003). The result of her doctoral research was a platform for self-learning and researching mural art that is used by several Latin-American universities. She also has a drone/UAV Pilot Training Certificate from the Flyschool Air Academy, Spain, (2015).

Associate Professor at the UPV, Department of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage (Faculty of Fine Arts). Currently, she is also the coordinator of the Research micro-cluster “Globalisation, tourism and heritage” of the International Campus of Excellence. She is part of the aerial drone pilot commission which depends on the UPV Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Transfer. Her main research area is the social construction and sustainable management of street art, and creative heritage from a sustainable management perspective. Her studies incorporate the use of RPAS for the process of research and innovation, and provide new perspectives in relation to space and its integration in creative cities. In addition, she lectures in mural art and the creative industries.

In the last 5 years, she has conducted 8 international R&D projects supported by competitive calls and 10 R&D international contracts supported by public and private organisations. Their results are disseminated in published papers, national and international congress contributions, the organisation of international workshops, research visits to Italy, Mexico, Uruguay and U.K., and the supervision of master’s dissertations and doctoral theses. She is also currently coordinating AiRT, an EC funded project (Proposal 732433, H2020-ICT-2016-2017).