UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

The Heritage-Climate Paradox

2022-01-26

In my presentation on “Risks for Peace Due to Promotion of Heritage”, given on 26 January 2022 at the global ICCROM conference Climate.Culture.Peace in a session on Culture, Climate and Drivers of Conflict, I introduced the Heritage-Climate Paradox in its two dimensions:

  1. Whereas heritage is often about conservation and timeless values, the climate crisis is about change and the transformation of our lives and many people’s livelihoods.
  2. Whereas heritage is about making cultural distinctions in space, contrasting US with THEM (often in terms of nations or ethnic groups), the climate crisis requires us to find global solutions and to promote global solidarity.

Here is the full abstract of my paper:

As the significance of culture and cultural heritage is gradually entering high-level discussions concerning sustainable development, I am cautioning against generalizing the view that culture and heritage necessarily benefit mitigation and adaptation related to climate change. Promoting seemingly timeless heritage derived from the past can make necessary transformations of inherited ways of life and livelihoods more difficult. At the same time, perceptions of exclusive cultural heritage may support ethnic pride and social exclusion. Both recent and historical examples show how perceptions and uses of cultural heritage can inflame violent conflicts between different cultural groups over power and territory. Promoting heritage can thus threaten peace and human rights, reduce socio-cultural cohesion and resilience, and effectively become a hinder for global human adaptation.

 

 

University and Museum collaborating

2022-01-21

Ulrika Söderström wrote a report assessing the status quo and prospects of collaboration between Kalmar County Museum and Linnaeus University.

Both organisations have collaborated intensively for many years, encompassing teaching, research and research education. The Museum is the largest partner in the Industrial Research School GRASCA of which Söderström herself is a member and which is led by UNESCO Chairholder Cornelius Holtorf. Söderström investigates in her research how cultural heritage and archaeology can be applied in theory and practice to contribute to sustainable urban development. She is affiliated with the Chair too.

Written in Swedish, the report is now available here.

Action for World Heritage

2022-01-17

In 1 December 2020, Cornelius Holtorf commented on the draft Action Plan for implementing the National World Heritage Strategy of the Swedish National Heritage Board.

In early November, the revised final version of the Action Plan for implementing the National World Heritage Strategy in Sweden was published.

Thanks to our suggestion, the plan mentions a need for increased collaboration between Universities and domains of practice to contribute to knowledge development concerning world heritage work. The UNESCO Chair at Linnaeus University is specifically mentioned to be involved in a survey of expertise on world heritage work available at Swedish Universities, in order to strengthen collaboration between research, education and practice. 

 

 

Swedish Museums’ Spring Meeting

2021-04-27

The theme of the 2021 Spring Meeting of the Organisation of Swedish Museums was “Contribute, Collaborate, Impact – together we come longer” (27-29 april 2021). 

The programme featured an interview with Anders Högberg and a conversation including Cornelius Holtorf on the topic of the gathering. Anders presented his latest work on Museum Entrepreneurship, whereas Cornelius discussed the experiences of our Research School GRASCA.

Due to the pandemic, some presentations were pre-recorded this year.