UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

UNESCO Chair at Nordic TAG

2026-05-12

Nordic TAG at Linnaeus University Kalmar was the largest archaeological conference in Scandinavia in 2026. It was co-organized by Gustav Wollentz and Emily Hanscam (together with two colleagues).

The theme of the conference was ‘Activating Archaeology for Just Futures’, exploring the interface between research and activism and the potential for archaeology as a practice – from the contract archaeology trenches to the university lecture halls – to be an active and engaged partner in building just futures.

The conference included nearly 200 participants, ran for 3.5 days with 19 sessions and 4 workshops.

Helena Rydén organised and ran a table with publications and other information about the work of the UNESCO Chair at Linnaeus University (7-8 April 2026).

Helena Rydén organised and ran a table with publications and other information about the work of the UNESCO Chair at Linnaeus University (7-8 April 2026).

Anders Högberg, Gustav Wollentz and Emily Hanscam co-organized and co-chaired a half-day session on “Reconceptualizing Heritage for Lasting Peace”. They also gave a joint introductory paper with the same title as the session (8 May 2026).

Marcy Rockman also presented in the session on “Reconceptualizing Heritage for Lasting Peace” (8 April 2026).

Gustav Wollentz and Leila Papoli-Yazdi co-organized a workshop on ”Imagining Novel Futures for Archaeology”, with 15 contributors (9 April 2026). 

Cornelius Holtorf presented a paper entitled “Alternative Futures: How can cultural heritage be mobilized for peace rather than war?” in a session on “Reconceptualizing Heritage for Lasting Peace” (8 May 2026)

Gustav Wollentz presented a paper entitled “Reimagining heritage through hope and potentiality” in a session on “Reconceptualizing Heritage for Lasting Peace” (8 April 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf co-organised as session on “Soil as Archive, Actor and Ally: Rewilding Archaeological Practice” for an audience of cirka 30 participants (8 May 2026).

Cornelius Holtorf presented a paper entitled “Devouring the Iron Age: A Life-Centred and Culinary Approach to the Soil” in the session on “Soil as Archive, Actor and Ally: Rewilding Archaeological Practice” (8 May 2026). The paper was presented outdoors:

Cornelius Holtorf presented the paper “Devouring the Iron Age: A Life-Centred and Culinary Approach to the Soil” during the session Soil as Archive, Actor and Ally: Rewilding Archaeological Practice (8 May 2026). The presentation took place outdoors, featuring an oregano plant grown in soil from an archaeological excavation on Öland.
Cornelius Holtorf presented the paper “Devouring the Iron Age: A Life-Centred and Culinary Approach to the Soil” during the session Soil as Archive, Actor and Ally: Rewilding Archaeological Practice (8 May 2026). The presentation took place outdoors, featuring an oregano plant grown in soil from an archaeological excavation on Öland.

Cornelius Holtorf presented the paper “Devouring the Iron Age: A Life-Centred and Culinary Approach to the Soil” on 8 May 2026. The presentation took place outdoors, featuring an oregano plant grown in soil from an archaeological excavation on Öland.

Watch a short video clip here: Cornelius Holtorf demonstrating to visitors https://play.lnu.se/media/t/0_v66b1bak

Watch a short animation (postcard) here

Leila Papoli-Yazdi organized a session called “Association of Poor Archaeologists” which was held on 7 May.

Read more about Nordic TAG 2026 here (In Swedish)

Becoming human in the age of AI

2026-03-04

Anders Högberg published a paper in which he discusses the significance of Artificial General Intelligence in the context of human cognitive co-evolution.

ABSTRACT: This perspective article brings to focus the unpredictable trajectory of AI-human cognitive co-evolution. Challenging the notion of a fixed ‘Stone Age brain’, it emphasizes the adaptive and plastic nature of human cognition shaped by millions of years of technological engagement. Underlining the need for anticipatory thinking, it asks: What do we need to know now, to be able to recognize what people need to understand in a yet unexplored future of AI-human cognitive co-evolution? Rather than presenting empirical findings, this theoretical and exploratory piece seeks to stimulate reflection and dialog on how AI’s integration into human life may transform our notions of humanness, as AI systems are reshaping human cognition, relationships, and socio-technical practices.

Högberg asks: how might AI-human collaboration redefine future understandings of what it means to be human?

Högberg, A. 2026. Becoming human in the age of AI: cognitive co-evolutionary processes. Frontiers in Psychology, 16:1734048. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1734048

Long Now at Long Last

2024-04-01

Last night, I finally visited The Interval – home of The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. A wonderful location and initiative, promoting long-term thinking since 01996:

The Interval is a bar, café, museum, and the home of The Long Now Foundation. Featuring a floor-to-ceiling library of the books you might need to rebuild civilization, mechanical prototypes for a clock meant to last for 10,000 years, art that continually evolves in real time, and a time-inspired menu of artisan drinks.

The ‘long now’ and futures-thinking are as worth promoting today as they were back in 2006, when Michael Chabon wrote for Details:

I don’t know what happened to the Future. It’s as if we lost our ability, or our will, to envision anything beyond the next hundred years or so, as if we lacked the fundamental faith that there will in fact be any future at all beyond that not-too-distant date. Or maybe we stopped talking about the Future around the time that, with its microchips and its twenty-four-hour news cycles, it arrived. […] The Future was represented so often and for so long, in the terms and characteristic styles of so many historical periods from, say, Jules Verne forward, that at some point the idea of the Future—along with the cultural appetite for it—came itself to feel like something historical, outmoded, no longer viable or attainable.

On my visit to The Interval, I also noted two things that I had not previously thought about regarding the work of The Long Now Foundation.

  • Firstly, its thinking is most prominently focussed on technology rather than, say, social or cultural issues. But is the long-term future really a question that is best advanced by technological innovations like the Foundations famous “Clock of the Long Now”?
  • Secondly, while they certainly champion long-term thinking in terms of millennia rather than decades, they developed this thinking before the emergence of the concept of “futures literacy” at UNESCO. The latter emphasizes the skills of becoming aware of your assumptions of the future and of imagining multiple alternative futures.

I can’t help wondering about the future of the Long Now Foundation. In other words, how LONG is it until its focus is going to be adapted to one or more new futures?

Imag(in)ing the Future

2023-03-13

The members of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures took part in a Visual Literacy Workshop on Imag(in)ing the Future
run by Vicky Karaiskou, UNESCO Chair on Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy based at the Open University of Cyprus (13 March 2023).



Visual literacy workshops stem from the concession that all beliefs and stances are limiting. With an aim to open to new ideas, possibilities and approaches related to our personal or professional lives, the interactive and participatory VL workshops explore our perceptions and assumptions.

“Imag(in)ing the Future” workshop indicated how our visual representations speak to our emotional domains and, therefore, dictate our choices and walks of life.