Popi Georgopoulou

Popi Georgopoulou has been active at museums, and cultural venues more generally, for a number of years in her dual capacity as museum studies specialist and tour guide. On the back of this experience, she realized that the theoretical frameworks applied to archeological museums, and by extension to Greek antiquities, are being shaped within the limits of aesthetic criteria and chronological historical narratives, whereas she herself believes that material and intangible culture is not – and must not be presented as being – univocal.

Seeking to design a program that places visitors at each museum and cultural venue at its heart, Georgopoulou – with the assistance of her team – formulated a suitable interpretative framework that allows each visitor to turn information into knowledge. This is the Natural Sciences Educative Islet (NSEI) program, a mobile structure that unfolds in the spaces around a specific archeological exhibit, and that is equipped with all the necessary educational tools for the realization of teaching programs on topics relating to archeology as seen through a natural sciences prism, taking children aged nine to thirteen as its target audience.

These natural sciences, which act as cross-disciplinary bridges, are: a) archeometry; b) the conservation of antiquities; c) the ancient Greek sciences; and d) ancient Greek technology and art. That is, they are existing scientific fields of an interdisciplinary nature, with discrete theoretical frameworks and academic methodologies that, though indispensable during the documentation of archeological finds, are rarely taken into account by interpretative narratives. However, the incorporation of such elements ought to result from simultaneous teaching and museographic transpositions, so that everything from language (terminology) to visual aids (images, constructions) and spatial configurations (display cases, special constructions) can be decoded by a variety of visitor groups, and meet clearly defined educational goals.

The first Natural Sciences Educative Islet (NSEI), designed to form part of the permanent exhibition at the new Archeological Museum of Thebes, was based on the various stages of a scientific inquiry: a) formulating research questions – macroscopic survey; b) microscopic survey; and c) conclusions – final museological report. Research into the relevant underlying theoretical framework, and analyses of the feasibility and effectiveness of the NSEI’s structure and content, formed the subject of Georgopoulou’s dissertation, conducted under the supervision of Dr Dimitris Koliopoulos, Professor at the Department of Educational Sciences and Early Childhood Education of the University of Patras. On learning of the concept via its very first European-level publication, Dr Anik Meunier – Professor of Museum Studies and Education at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) – reached out to Georgopoulou in order to set up a Greek-Canadian research group that would further explore the intersections of these two academic fields – archeology and the natural sciences – within an archeological museum setting.

This research is making simultaneous contributions to the fields of both museum studies (the interpretation of cultural resources, and museographic design) and natural sciences teaching, thus highlighting the need for academic partnerships to bring about the best possible outcomes. When the pleasure of creation meets with the joy of collaboration – this is the most important thing of all.