On 29 April 2024, the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports signed the Agreement on Professional and Scientific Cooperation in the Field of Archaeology, and Protection of Monuments between the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar. On behalf of the Ministry the Agreement was signed by the Federal Minister of Culture and Sports, Sanja Vlaisavljević, and Robert Stergar, Director of the Institute for the Protection of Monuments, the institution that will be organising and performing the contracted activities on behalf of the Ministry. On behalf of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar, the Agreement was signed by the Dean Dražen Barbarić.

The Agreement between the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar aims to strengthen the future cooperation and develop professional experience. Furthermore, it will contribute to strengthening the profession and competencies of the final users, primarily students, and to organizing the joint activities.

Before the act of signing, Minister Sanja Vlaisavljević greeted the guests, highlighting the basic mission of the cooperation between the Ministry and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar: “We have witnessed that our students very often learn the theory well, but when it comes to the practical aspect, there is a problem. It is precisely our goal to empower students, first of all to enable them to gain their first experience, knowledge and to take their profession in their own hands through practical work with our colleagues from the Institute who make visits all around Bosnia and Herzegovina. I want to believe that by the end of this academic year we will have the first meeting with the students so that they can get to know our great team, many architects, but also archaeologists and artists from the Institute. The intention is to open the Ministry in a completely different light, in which it will no longer be a bureaucratic and administrative closed institution, but a space and a meeting place for all those to who the Ministry is related”.

The Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar, Dražen Barbarić, pointed out that he was extremely happy with the implementation of the Agreement: “The Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar has a policy of not signing agreements that remain a dead letter. On this occasion, I would like to thank the Director of the Institute for the Protection of Monuments and Minister Vlaisavljević for recognising us as partners. One of the strategic commitments of the entire University of Mostar and the Faculty of Philosophy is also to open up to both the social community and economic entities, i.e. those stakeholders who incorporate the competences that we, conditionally speaking, place on the labour market into their own activities and institutions. The focus of this Agreement is on students and student practice. At the moment, mostly on archaeology students.”

Director of the Institute for the Protection of Monuments, Robert Stergar, believes that this cooperation will be permanent: “The Institute for the Protection of Monuments was closed for a long time. Our wish is to change that and for the institution to connect with the professional community in every sense. It is especially important for the Institute for the Protection of Monuments that young people understand the importance of the heritage as a whole and that they articulate this importance in their communities. Heritage is a specific area and we strive for the traces of our past to be recorded and presented, so that the community knows where we started, so that it knows where we should go. I am sure that this cooperation will be extremely successful and I am sure that it will not stop only at archaeology,” said Stergar.

Cooperation between the Ministry and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar will be carried out through the following main activities:

• organisation of student workshops and student internships,
• enabling student practice,
• promoting the value of science and profession,
• organisation of joint scientific symposia, gatherings and workshops,
• mutual support,
• consultancy work in the field of monument protection,
• debates, lectures and seminars in the fields of interest to the signatories,
• inter-institutional visits,
• exhibitions of the results of cooperation,
• publishing the results of cooperation,
• other, subsequently defined areas of cooperation.