Nikolaos Partarakis
Biographic Data
| ID | 6940179 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nikolaos Partarakis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nikolaos |
| FAMILY NAME | Partarakis |
| SIGNATURE | PARTARAKIS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0497-7348 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Valorising Traditional Crafts
Traditional craft practices face growing marginalization under industrialization yet remain central to cultural heritage and community identity. The Horizon Europe project CRAEFT addresses this through a Valorization Pilot, applying digital technologies across four dimensions: cultural experiences, games, retail support, and maker-oriented activities. The pilot adopted the Europeana Impact Framework, built on the Balanced Value Impact Model, to s…
From Material Silos to Thematic Pillars
The European crafts ecosystem faces critical structural threats, declining practitioner numbers, weakening intergenerational transmission, limited digital literacy, and competition from industrial imitation. Existing online craft communities are narrowly material-specific and structurally ill-suited to the cross-disciplinary dialogue required for systemic sector transformation. This paper presents the design, iterative development, and pilot eval…
A Systematic Review of Extended Reality (XR) Applications in Cultural Heritage
This systematic review examines how Extended Reality (XR) technologies, i.e., Virtual (VR), Augmented (AR), Mixed (MR), and Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) are designed, implemented, and evaluated in cultural heritage (CH) applications, addressing five research questions: (RQ1) How were XR technologies applied in CH between 2021 and 2025? (RQ2) What interaction paradigms are used, and how do they shape engagement and meaning making? (RQ3) What us…
The Role of Craft in Special Education
This study explores the potential of craft-based activities in the context of special education, focusing on a papier mâché sculpting workshop implemented at the Special Kindergarten of Komotini, Greece, as part of the Horizon Europe Craeft project. The initiative aimed to assess how such creative activities could enhance the learning experience of children with intellectual and motor impairments, foster socialization, and develop fine motor skil…
A Review, Analysis, and Roadmap to Support the Short-Term and Long-Term Sustainability of the European Crafts Sector
This publication highlights the strategic combination of the preservation of heritage and innovation for supporting the sustainability of traditional crafts in Europe. Demonstrating both challenges and opportunities faced by artisans, there is a need to balance cultural authenticity and the pressures of current markets and environmental imperatives. The research has explored interventions at three levels of craft practice, education, and training…
Simulation and Visualisation of Traditional Craft Actions
Digital tools exhibit the potential to support the sustainability of traditional crafts through training and presentation applications. This work presents an integrated approach, combining state-of-the-art simulation and visualisation techniques to model mechanical actions characteristic of traditional crafts. This integration promotes a deeper understanding of the material behaviours and processes that are fundamental to traditional crafts, prov…
Visiting Heritage Sites in AR and VR
Advances in digitization technologies have made possible the digitization of entire archaeological sites through a combination of technologies, including aerial photogrammetry, terrestrial photogrammetry, and terrestrial laser scanning. At the same time, the evolution of computer algorithms for data processing and the increased processing power made possible the combination of data from multiple scans to create a synthetic representation of large…
A Roadmap for Craft Understanding, Education, Training, and Preservation
A roadmap is proposed that defines a systematic approach for craft preservation and its evaluation. The proposed roadmap aims to deepen craft understanding so that blueprints of appropriate tools that support craft documentation, education, and training can be designed while achieving preservation through the stimulation and diversification of practitioner income. In addition to this roadmap, an evaluation strategy is proposed to validate the eff…
Three-Dimensional Digitization of Archaeological Sites—The Use Case of the Palace of Knossos
Modern digitization technologies have created an increasing number of possibilities for capturing the physical dimensions and appearance of archaeological artifacts and sites in 3D. The usage of such data is usually targeted to the research, study, and documentation of our cultural heritage. At the same time, the increasing quality of the produced digitizations has opened new possibilities for the further exploitation of digitization outcomes in …
Traditional Craft Training and Demonstration in Museums
This work regards the representation of handicrafts for craft training and demonstration in the environment of an ethnographic heritage museum. The craft of mastic cultivation is chosen as a use case. This paper presents the process of representation and presentation of this craft, following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annotation, and semantic representation. The outcomes were used to implement an exhibition that targets…
A Case Study on Supporting the Preservation, Valorization and Sustainability of Natural Heritage
Caves can be considered as features of the landscape that have been formatted through a long period and are signs of the past climatological conditions, of prehistoric animal and human inhabitation, and provide habitat for species. In the near past, caves have also gained tourism interest since they offer unique sightseeing experiences. The sustainability and protection of cave heritage have been recently discussed mainly because over-tourism has…
Mixed-Reality Demonstration and Training of Glassblowing
Traditional crafts exhibit tangible and intangible dimensions. Intangible dimensions include the practitioner’s gestural know-how in craft practice and have received smaller attention than tangible dimensions in digitization projects. This work presents the process of representation and presentation of the glasswork and is exemplified in the re-creation of a historical object. Following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annota…
InCulture
Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH) is defined as the collection of oral traditions and expressions such as epics, fairy tales, stories, arts, social practices, rituals and celebrations, events, knowledge, and practices related to nature and the universe, traditional medicine, folk medicine, traditional handcrafts, as well as personal experiences related to important historical events or cultural activities that shaped the historical and local iden…
A Method and Platform for the Preservation of Temporary Exhibitions
Temporary exhibitions have not only been the oldest, but also the most successful model of art mediation (e.g., the Venice Biennale). In this research work, we are interested in the subject of preserving periodic exhibitions in the form of an interactive virtual memory to be revisited in the future. Although popular forms for doing so include photography, video coverage, and catalogs, we are interested in the implementation of a digital “timestam…
A Representation Protocol for Traditional Crafts
A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are proposed. The proposed protocol is a method for the systematic collection and organization of digital assets and knowledge, their representation into a formal model, and their utilization for research, education, and preservation. A set of digital tools accompanies this protocol that enables the online curation of craft representations. The proposed approa…
Multimodal Narratives for the Presentation of Silk Heritage in the Museum
In this paper, a representation based on digital assets and semantic annotations is established for Traditional Craft instances, in a way that captures their socio-historic context and preserves both their tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage dimensions. These meaningful and documented experiential presentations are delivered to the target audience through narratives that address a range of uses, including personalized storytelling, interact…
Extraction of Event-Related Information from Text for the Representation of Cultural Heritage
In knowledge representation systems for Cultural Heritage (CH) there is a vast amount of curated textual information for CH objects and sites. However, the large-scale study of the accumulated knowledge is difficult as long as it is provided in the form of free text. By extracting the most significant pieces of information from textual descriptions of CH objects and sites and compiling them in a single comprehensive knowledge graph, conforming to…
Supporting Online and On-Site Digital Diverse Travels
Cultural-heritage research has created a vast amount of information regarding heritage objects and sites. At the same time, recent efforts on the digitization of cultural heritage have provided novel means of documenting tangible cultural resources including digital images, videos, audio testimonies, and 3D reconstructions. Furthermore, ethnographic research is nowadays combined with advanced capturing technologies such as motion capture to recor…
Representation and Presentation of Culinary Tradition as Cultural Heritage
This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the representation and presentation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of culinary tradition as cultural heritage including the socio-historic context of its evolution. The representation framework adheres to and extends the knowledge representation standards for the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain while providing a widely accessible web-based authoring envi…
Supporting Sign Language Narrations in the Museum
The accessibility of Cultural Heritage content for the diverse user population visiting Cultural Heritage Institutions and accessing content online has not been thoroughly discussed. Considering the penetration of new digital media in such physical and virtual spaces, lack of accessibility may result in the exclusion of a large user population. To overcome such emerging barriers, this paper proposes a cost-effective methodology for the implementa…
Realistic Virtual Humans for Cultural Heritage Applications
Virtual Humans are becoming a commodity in computing technology and lately have been utilized in the context of interactive presentations in Virtual Cultural Heritage environments and exhibitions. To this end, this research work underlines the importance of aligning and fine-tuning Virtual Humans’ appearance to their roles and highlights the importance of affective components. Building realistic Virtual Humans was traditionally a great challenge …
Realistic Virtual Humans for Cultural Heritage Applications
Virtual Humans are becoming a commodity in computing technology and lately have been utilized in the context of interactive presentations in Virtual Cultural Heritage environments and exhibitions. To this end, this research work underlines the importance of aligning and fine-tuning Virtual Humans’ appearance to their roles and highlights the importance of affective components. Building realistic Virtual Humans was traditionally a great challenge …
A Representation Protocol for Traditional Crafts
A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are proposed. The proposed protocol is a method for the systematic collection and organization of digital assets and knowledge, their representation into a formal model, and their utilization for research, education, and preservation. A set of digital tools accompanies this protocol that enables the online curation of craft representations. The proposed approa…
Representation and Presentation of Culinary Tradition as Cultural Heritage
This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the representation and presentation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of culinary tradition as cultural heritage including the socio-historic context of its evolution. The representation framework adheres to and extends the knowledge representation standards for the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain while providing a widely accessible web-based authoring envi…
Mixed-Reality Demonstration and Training of Glassblowing
Traditional crafts exhibit tangible and intangible dimensions. Intangible dimensions include the practitioner’s gestural know-how in craft practice and have received smaller attention than tangible dimensions in digitization projects. This work presents the process of representation and presentation of the glasswork and is exemplified in the re-creation of a historical object. Following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annota…
Three-Dimensional Digitization of Archaeological Sites—The Use Case of the Palace of Knossos
Modern digitization technologies have created an increasing number of possibilities for capturing the physical dimensions and appearance of archaeological artifacts and sites in 3D. The usage of such data is usually targeted to the research, study, and documentation of our cultural heritage. At the same time, the increasing quality of the produced digitizations has opened new possibilities for the further exploitation of digitization outcomes in …
Multimodal Narratives for the Presentation of Silk Heritage in the Museum
In this paper, a representation based on digital assets and semantic annotations is established for Traditional Craft instances, in a way that captures their socio-historic context and preserves both their tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage dimensions. These meaningful and documented experiential presentations are delivered to the target audience through narratives that address a range of uses, including personalized storytelling, interact…
Supporting Sign Language Narrations in the Museum
The accessibility of Cultural Heritage content for the diverse user population visiting Cultural Heritage Institutions and accessing content online has not been thoroughly discussed. Considering the penetration of new digital media in such physical and virtual spaces, lack of accessibility may result in the exclusion of a large user population. To overcome such emerging barriers, this paper proposes a cost-effective methodology for the implementa…
Visiting Heritage Sites in AR and VR
Advances in digitization technologies have made possible the digitization of entire archaeological sites through a combination of technologies, including aerial photogrammetry, terrestrial photogrammetry, and terrestrial laser scanning. At the same time, the evolution of computer algorithms for data processing and the increased processing power made possible the combination of data from multiple scans to create a synthetic representation of large…
Traditional Craft Training and Demonstration in Museums
This work regards the representation of handicrafts for craft training and demonstration in the environment of an ethnographic heritage museum. The craft of mastic cultivation is chosen as a use case. This paper presents the process of representation and presentation of this craft, following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annotation, and semantic representation. The outcomes were used to implement an exhibition that targets…
InCulture
Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH) is defined as the collection of oral traditions and expressions such as epics, fairy tales, stories, arts, social practices, rituals and celebrations, events, knowledge, and practices related to nature and the universe, traditional medicine, folk medicine, traditional handcrafts, as well as personal experiences related to important historical events or cultural activities that shaped the historical and local iden…
Supporting Online and On-Site Digital Diverse Travels
Cultural-heritage research has created a vast amount of information regarding heritage objects and sites. At the same time, recent efforts on the digitization of cultural heritage have provided novel means of documenting tangible cultural resources including digital images, videos, audio testimonies, and 3D reconstructions. Furthermore, ethnographic research is nowadays combined with advanced capturing technologies such as motion capture to recor…
Representation and Presentation of Culinary Tradition as Cultural Heritage
This paper presents a knowledge representation framework and provides tools to allow the representation and presentation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of culinary tradition as cultural heritage including the socio-historic context of its evolution. The representation framework adheres to and extends the knowledge representation standards for the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain while providing a widely accessible web-based authoring envi…
Supporting Sign Language Narrations in the Museum
The accessibility of Cultural Heritage content for the diverse user population visiting Cultural Heritage Institutions and accessing content online has not been thoroughly discussed. Considering the penetration of new digital media in such physical and virtual spaces, lack of accessibility may result in the exclusion of a large user population. To overcome such emerging barriers, this paper proposes a cost-effective methodology for the implementa…
Realistic Virtual Humans for Cultural Heritage Applications
Virtual Humans are becoming a commodity in computing technology and lately have been utilized in the context of interactive presentations in Virtual Cultural Heritage environments and exhibitions. To this end, this research work underlines the importance of aligning and fine-tuning Virtual Humans’ appearance to their roles and highlights the importance of affective components. Building realistic Virtual Humans was traditionally a great challenge …
Traditional Craft Training and Demonstration in Museums
This work regards the representation of handicrafts for craft training and demonstration in the environment of an ethnographic heritage museum. The craft of mastic cultivation is chosen as a use case. This paper presents the process of representation and presentation of this craft, following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annotation, and semantic representation. The outcomes were used to implement an exhibition that targets…
A Case Study on Supporting the Preservation, Valorization and Sustainability of Natural Heritage
Caves can be considered as features of the landscape that have been formatted through a long period and are signs of the past climatological conditions, of prehistoric animal and human inhabitation, and provide habitat for species. In the near past, caves have also gained tourism interest since they offer unique sightseeing experiences. The sustainability and protection of cave heritage have been recently discussed mainly because over-tourism has…
Mixed-Reality Demonstration and Training of Glassblowing
Traditional crafts exhibit tangible and intangible dimensions. Intangible dimensions include the practitioner’s gestural know-how in craft practice and have received smaller attention than tangible dimensions in digitization projects. This work presents the process of representation and presentation of the glasswork and is exemplified in the re-creation of a historical object. Following an articulated pipeline approach for data collection, annota…
InCulture
Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH) is defined as the collection of oral traditions and expressions such as epics, fairy tales, stories, arts, social practices, rituals and celebrations, events, knowledge, and practices related to nature and the universe, traditional medicine, folk medicine, traditional handcrafts, as well as personal experiences related to important historical events or cultural activities that shaped the historical and local iden…
A Method and Platform for the Preservation of Temporary Exhibitions
Temporary exhibitions have not only been the oldest, but also the most successful model of art mediation (e.g., the Venice Biennale). In this research work, we are interested in the subject of preserving periodic exhibitions in the form of an interactive virtual memory to be revisited in the future. Although popular forms for doing so include photography, video coverage, and catalogs, we are interested in the implementation of a digital “timestam…
A Representation Protocol for Traditional Crafts
A protocol for the representation of traditional crafts and the tools to implement this are proposed. The proposed protocol is a method for the systematic collection and organization of digital assets and knowledge, their representation into a formal model, and their utilization for research, education, and preservation. A set of digital tools accompanies this protocol that enables the online curation of craft representations. The proposed approa…
Multimodal Narratives for the Presentation of Silk Heritage in the Museum
In this paper, a representation based on digital assets and semantic annotations is established for Traditional Craft instances, in a way that captures their socio-historic context and preserves both their tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage dimensions. These meaningful and documented experiential presentations are delivered to the target audience through narratives that address a range of uses, including personalized storytelling, interact…
Extraction of Event-Related Information from Text for the Representation of Cultural Heritage
In knowledge representation systems for Cultural Heritage (CH) there is a vast amount of curated textual information for CH objects and sites. However, the large-scale study of the accumulated knowledge is difficult as long as it is provided in the form of free text. By extracting the most significant pieces of information from textual descriptions of CH objects and sites and compiling them in a single comprehensive knowledge graph, conforming to…
Visiting Heritage Sites in AR and VR
Advances in digitization technologies have made possible the digitization of entire archaeological sites through a combination of technologies, including aerial photogrammetry, terrestrial photogrammetry, and terrestrial laser scanning. At the same time, the evolution of computer algorithms for data processing and the increased processing power made possible the combination of data from multiple scans to create a synthetic representation of large…
A Roadmap for Craft Understanding, Education, Training, and Preservation
A roadmap is proposed that defines a systematic approach for craft preservation and its evaluation. The proposed roadmap aims to deepen craft understanding so that blueprints of appropriate tools that support craft documentation, education, and training can be designed while achieving preservation through the stimulation and diversification of practitioner income. In addition to this roadmap, an evaluation strategy is proposed to validate the eff…
Three-Dimensional Digitization of Archaeological Sites—The Use Case of the Palace of Knossos
Modern digitization technologies have created an increasing number of possibilities for capturing the physical dimensions and appearance of archaeological artifacts and sites in 3D. The usage of such data is usually targeted to the research, study, and documentation of our cultural heritage. At the same time, the increasing quality of the produced digitizations has opened new possibilities for the further exploitation of digitization outcomes in …
Simulation and Visualisation of Traditional Craft Actions
Digital tools exhibit the potential to support the sustainability of traditional crafts through training and presentation applications. This work presents an integrated approach, combining state-of-the-art simulation and visualisation techniques to model mechanical actions characteristic of traditional crafts. This integration promotes a deeper understanding of the material behaviours and processes that are fundamental to traditional crafts, prov…
The Role of Craft in Special Education
This study explores the potential of craft-based activities in the context of special education, focusing on a papier mâché sculpting workshop implemented at the Special Kindergarten of Komotini, Greece, as part of the Horizon Europe Craeft project. The initiative aimed to assess how such creative activities could enhance the learning experience of children with intellectual and motor impairments, foster socialization, and develop fine motor skil…
A Review, Analysis, and Roadmap to Support the Short-Term and Long-Term Sustainability of the European Crafts Sector
This publication highlights the strategic combination of the preservation of heritage and innovation for supporting the sustainability of traditional crafts in Europe. Demonstrating both challenges and opportunities faced by artisans, there is a need to balance cultural authenticity and the pressures of current markets and environmental imperatives. The research has explored interventions at three levels of craft practice, education, and training…
Valorising Traditional Crafts
Traditional craft practices face growing marginalization under industrialization yet remain central to cultural heritage and community identity. The Horizon Europe project CRAEFT addresses this through a Valorization Pilot, applying digital technologies across four dimensions: cultural experiences, games, retail support, and maker-oriented activities. The pilot adopted the Europeana Impact Framework, built on the Balanced Value Impact Model, to s…
From Material Silos to Thematic Pillars
The European crafts ecosystem faces critical structural threats, declining practitioner numbers, weakening intergenerational transmission, limited digital literacy, and competition from industrial imitation. Existing online craft communities are narrowly material-specific and structurally ill-suited to the cross-disciplinary dialogue required for systemic sector transformation. This paper presents the design, iterative development, and pilot eval…
A Systematic Review of Extended Reality (XR) Applications in Cultural Heritage
This systematic review examines how Extended Reality (XR) technologies, i.e., Virtual (VR), Augmented (AR), Mixed (MR), and Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) are designed, implemented, and evaluated in cultural heritage (CH) applications, addressing five research questions: (RQ1) How were XR technologies applied in CH between 2021 and 2025? (RQ2) What interaction paradigms are used, and how do they shape engagement and meaning making? (RQ3) What us…
Computer Science (15 works) · Cultural heritage (11 works) · Visual arts (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Artificial Intelligence (9 works) · Museums and Cultural Heritage (9 works) · Craft (8 works) · Multimedia (8 works) · 3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage (7 works)