UNESCO

Humanity’s Uranium

2026-02-24

Claudio Pescatore gave a research seminar for 20 staff and students at the Linnaeus University Centre for the Environment (CENWIN) in Kalmar, Sweden.

The title of his talk was “Humanity’s Uranium as a Planetary Liability – Its Chemical and Radiological Toxicity, Ecological Debt, and the Governance Gap.” Here is a 10-point summary:

Uranium in the Earth’s crust belongs to geology: dispersed, buffered, and governed by natural timescales.
Once extracted, it leaves geology and enters history — becoming part of human systems, decisions, and liabilities.
Less than 1% is fissioned for energy; more than 99% remains as a long-lived material stock.
Uranium is not consumed — it is redistributed into tailings, depleted uranium, fuels, and wastes.
Its decay chain regenerates over time, while the uranium parent remains essentially undepleted.
The hazard is therefore persistent, combining chemical mobility and radiological renewal.
Remediation can manage flux and exposure, but it does not erase the underlying inventory.
Dilution depends on finite environmental buffering capacity and cannot be a durable solution.
Long-term safety requires working with natural processes — containment, geochemical stability, and stewardship — rather than assuming closure against them.
A sustainability debate that ignores this enduring, mobilised uranium inventory rests on an incomplete material accounting.

Cornelius Holtorf was invited to present the 9th Annual Heritage Lecture at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge, UK (20 February 2026). In front of an audience of 60+ students and researchers in cultural heritage he gave a lecture on decolonising the future:

Decolonising the Future: From Preserving Memory across Generations to Sustaining the (Re-)Generation of Memory

Resprouting tree in front of the Ishinomaki Kadonowaki Elementary School

The field of ‘heritage futures’ explores the roles cultural heritage plays in negotiating relations between present and future societies. In many contemporary contexts, cultural heritage is to be preserved explicitly for the benefit of future generations. Such efforts are typically grounded in the assumption that present-day values and narratives of heritage will be shared and appreciated in the future. The preservation of cultural heritage may indeed create benefits, much as a less polluted, better preserved, and more sustainable natural environment is likely to benefit those who come after us. Implicitly, we expect our preservation practices to ensure that we will be remembered as good ancestors.

Yet to what extent do the tangible and intangible legacies we leave behind constitute attempts to establish control over future human (and indeed some non-human) beings? Does heritage preservation inadvertently colonize those who will live in the future by imposing our present-day values and priorities upon them? If so, is this problematic in ways comparable to the colonisation of living peoples in the past, a legacy with which we are still grappling today? Do we therefore need to decolonize the future?

I address this challenge by asking how we might make sense of the past through memory in a world where the future is not what it used to be. Two case-studies will help me to explore what this shift may entail. Both concern forms of memory and heritage created in the present to benefit the future, and both relate to nuclear power, a domain that has long provoked existential questions about the future of humanity. First, I examine the memorialisation of the 3/11 disaster, following the major earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan’s northeastern coast in 2011 and led to the nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Second, I consider strategies designed to preserve awareness of nuclear waste repositories across many generations and for up to one million years.

In conclusion, I invite the audience to consider an alternative approach to heritage futures that may, in fact, reflect how memory has always functioned (because the future may never have been what it used to be). I propose moving away from present-day strategies aimed at transmitting memory unchanged across generations, towards an acceptance of continuous processes of (re-)generating memory and the changes this entails. My point is that it may not be the values we currently ascribe to heritage that endure over time, but rather the processes through which heritage is continually revalued. Can and should such a post-preservational approach contribute to decolonizing the future?

Uranium: What We Leave Behind Comes First

2026-02-20

Uranium, heritage futures, and environmental assessment

When uranium is discussed, the conversation usually starts with risk: toxicity, radiation, standards, limits. But risk is not the beginning of the story.

Before uranium becomes a health concern, it becomes something else:
◻︎ a long-lived inheritance.

Heritage is whatever persists beyond us and must be dealt with by those who follow. Some of it is chosen. Much of it is not. Industrial societies, in particular, generate large amounts of unintentional material heritage: substances, residues, and infrastructures that remain active long after their usefulness — and often their caretakers — are gone. Uranium belongs squarely in that category.

Long before we calculate doses to people or compliance margins, uranium has already become a durable inheritance that future societies must manage. This is where heritage futures and environmental assessment intersect.

Why Risk Frameworks Matter — but Come Later

Because uranium persists, institutions attempt to manage it through risk frameworks.

Historically, these frameworks have made a clear division:

▸ uranium → treated mainly as a chemical toxicant
▸ radium → treated as the radiological concern

This separation is deeply embedded in regulations, monitoring programs, and safety assessments. It has also shaped how responsibility is understood and communicated across time. But it carries an implicit assumption:

▹ that radium, not uranium, controls radiological ingestion risk.

What the Research Shows

In my latest paper, published in Science of the Total Environment, I tested this assumption directly. Two key results emerge:

▸ Uranium is not radiologically negligible, even where international guideline values are fully respected.

▸ Dose delivery is controlled by mobility, and groundwater systems are typically charged far more with uranium than with radium.

In other words, although radium is more radiotoxic per decay, uranium often dominates radiological ingestion risk simply because there is much more of it dissolved in water.

Why This Matters for Heritage — Not Just Compliance

Seen through a heritage lens, this result has a deeper meaning. The continued use of radium as a universal proxy for uranium-related radiological risk is not just a technical shortcut. It is a legacy assumption, inherited from earlier regulatory cultures.

That assumption:

▸ fragments what is chemically and physically unified,
▸ hides part of the long-term burden, and
▸ narrows how responsibility is framed across generations.

Turning the Perspective Around

The main message is not that past frameworks were wrong. It is that the material heritage we have created no longer fits comfortably within them.

Uranium is not just the parent of radium in a decay chain. In water-mediated environments, it often becomes the parent of dose — and therefore of risk.

Recognizing this does not overturn radiological protection. It strengthens its internal coherence. And, more importantly, it clarifies what kind of heritage we are actually passing on — material, persistent, ethical, and administrative, and inescapably shared with the future.

Hopemaking

2026-02-04

As many as four of us (Emily Hanscam, Gustav Wollentz, Marcy Rockman and Cornelius Holtorf) participated actively in a stimulating workshop in Höör (Scania, Sweden) on Hopemaking, bringing together artists, an art curator, and scholars at Linnaeus University in English Literature and us in Archaeology with different agendas exploring common ground.

The project explores hopemaking as a way of countering the paralyzing predisposition to imagine future disaster as inevitable and of nurturing alternative cultures of hope and resilience. In the project, we collaborate with three local artists and Kalmar Art Museum in the context of their exhibition entitled “Survival Kit”.

Particularly exciting was to meet the two artists behind Kultivator, Malin and Mathieu. In their experimental work, they combine art with agriculture. For our project, they are keen to contribute to hopemaking by visualizing different futures. We are very excited! 🙂

New histories for new futures

2026-01-11

Historian Sandra Mass reflected in an important new book on Zukünftige Vergangenheiten (Future Pasts) on what it means, and could mean, to be writing history in the Anthropocene. This is a timely topic very relevant to the concept of ‘heritage futures,’ for it addresses ‘history futures’. By that I do not only (even mainly) mean the future of researching and teaching history, as she mostly does, but rather the significance today of composing stories of the past that enhance people’s capacity of meeting the challenges of the future (but see her discussion on p. 46-7). As I see it, the primary question is not which future pasts (i.e. descriptions of our present) future historians should be presenting but which present and future histories (i.e. accounts of the past) are most likely to benefit future presents.

This does not mean that the future and people’s future needs are predetermined and can be foreseen. But Mass agrees as well that the future is no longer entirely open either, as climate change and nuclear waste, for example, create facts that reduce future human options (p. 33, 103-4). Following Zoltán Simon, it may even be that humanity as such will be threatened in an entirely novel future taking the hit of climate change, nuclear war, and/or artificial intelligence (p. 106). What does that possible prospect mean for future history, potentially lacking significance in an altogether different reality? Could history in such a world cease to exist even without humanity to end (p. 107)?

The end of history? An illustration of the present text by ChatGPT.

Sandra Mass writes particularly convincing and insightful in her extensive discussion of “More-Than-Human-History,” an emerging focus that is particularly pertinent for understanding the Anthropocene and goes far beyond existing environmental history. Such a non-anthropocentric history will be helpful for placing Homo Sapiens into a larger planetary perspective fostering much needed insights and understandings of past, present, and future realities that can push the historic disciplines beyond many past agendas that are possibly losing in significance.

In this context, what Mass missed is not only the many obvious (to me anyway) links to Archaeology and the work of archaeologists. Clearly, she is aware of the potential of archaeology (p. 35) and considers it easy to integrate archaeology and some other neighbouring disciplines into historical agendas (p. 179-80). Fine! More seriously is her omission of the significance of heritage and history culture (Geschichtskultur) for addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Prominent scholars in historically oriented disciplines (including Pierre Nora, David Lowenthal, and Ian Hodder) argued that in a societal perspective, the significance of cultural heritage (and purposefully constructed sites of memory) has been superseding that of history (and living memory of the past). What will matter in future societies, I therefore suggest, is not primarily the extent to which scholarly knowledge will be able to represent important historical path dependencies during our and subsequent presents. Instead, what will matter more is the extent to which stories about the past manifested in cultural heritage relate, or will relate, to people’s lives and inform human behaviour by expressing and reinforcing particular collective identities, values, and mindsets that may or may not be in the best interest of future generations.

I argue therefore that historians, archaeologists, and others have important roles in shaping the future by giving attention to heritage futures now: the role of heritage in managing the relations between present and future societies.

New publication: Foresight in Heritage

2026-01-07

A new publication focusing on the value of Foresight in heritage was just published with Gustav Wollentz from the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures as a co-author. The article is named “Foresight in heritage: fostering future consciousness to proactively face change”, by Hana Morel, myself, Sarah Forgesson, Amy Iwasaki and Alison Heritage.

It is the first academic publication coming out from our engagement with ICCROM’s Strategic Foresight initiative, which has been piloting Foresight in heritage on a global level. It is a collaboration that is important since very little has been done in this area, and so much remains to be done.

The paper introduces Foresight as a structured approach that is increasingly employed across industries and disciplines for anticipating future change and proposes its utility for the heritage sector. We illustrate how integrating greater Foresight into heritage practice can encourage proactive engagement with emerging trends; develop resilient strategies for heritage research, planning and management; and locate where heritage-based actions can bring transformative change.

Morel H, Wollentz G, Forgesson S, Iwasaki A, Heritage A (2025;), “Foresight in heritage: fostering future consciousness to proactively face change”. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHMSD-12-2024-0298

Gustav Wollentz, UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

Various activities October – December 2025

2025-12-31

Cornelius Holtorf participated in the World Heritage Council Meeting for the World Heritage property Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland, Mörbylånga, Sweden (3 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting in Yokohama with Noboru Takamura, Director of The Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum, Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, to discuss heritage futures in the narrative of the museum (8 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting in Yokohama with Tatsuyoshi Saijo, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, to discuss his concept and practice of Future Design and how it relates both to heritage futures and to futures literacy (8 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in the annual meeting of the Academic Advisory Board of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology (LEIZA) in Mainz, Germany. He also chaired a meeting about a joint book project of the Board (15-17 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf contributed ideas about “The power of culture to advance intergenerational fairness” to the EU Citizens’ Engagement Platform informing policy-making on Intergenerational Fairness (25 October 2025). See https://citizens.ec.europa.eu/participation/processes/intergenerational-fairness/f/134/proposals/26071 .

Anders Högberg and Cornelius Holtorf started a course at Linnaeus University on Futures Literacy for Humanities Research (4.5 HEC) for nine research students from various Swedish Universities including Uppsala University, Malmö University and Linnaeus University. The introductory day on 27 October 2025 featured, among others, two lectures on aspects of heritage futures and futures literacy. The remainder of the course included supervision and a final seminar where the students’ work was presented and discussed.

Cornelius Holtorf lectured for three hours on “Cultural and heritage tourism – making choices for the future” for ten mostly international students taking the advanced-level course on Tourism and Sustainability in the Anthropocene 15 hec in Tourism and Recreation Studies at Linnaeus University, Kalmar (28 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with representatives of the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation in Abu Dhabi about a new project they are developing in “Emirati Futurism”, a distinct way for shaping the future involving the arts, culture and heritage (29 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting about Future Archaeology with Robert Duffley, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy and Helene Larsson Pousette in relation to a project entitled “Ungovernable” they are developing at Linnaeus University (30 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf lectured for two hours on “Background for Fieldwork on tourism in southern Öland” for twelve mostly international students taking the advanced-level course on Tourism and Sustainability in the Anthropocene 15 hec in Tourism and Recreation Studies at Linnaeus University, Kalmar (30 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf gave an invited online lecture entitled “Heritage Futures – what it is and why it matters” for MA and Doctoral students as well as researchers at the Centre for Heritage Revitalization and Sustainable Tourism Development linked to the UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Tourism in UNESCO Designated Sites at Fudan University, Shanghai, China (31 October 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with Rune Bjerkestrand and Bendik Bryde of the Arctic World Archive Foundation in Norway (3 November 2025). With their origins in the tech company Piql, their mission is to “preserve the world’s memory — securely, sustainably and freely accessible to all for generations to come.”

Cornelius Holtorf discussed informally future collaboration at the interface of heritage futures and cultural tourism with Professor Chaozhi Zhang, Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Tourism in UNESCO Designated Sites at Fudan University, Shanghai, China (4 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf presented an invited lecture on “Towards a Future Agenda for the Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland” for around 90 local and regional participated at the annual Knowledge Day for the Word Heritage property Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland 2025, Bollnäs, Sweden (5 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf presented an invited Inspirational Lecture on “Applying archaeology to solving challenges of present and future society: the significance of intersectoral collaboration and interdisciplinary methodologies” for cirka 80 Doctoral students and their supervisors from various disciplines and many Swedish Universities during the first Jubilee Doctoral Students network meeting of the Knowledge Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden (6 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf gave an invited online lecture for 20+ Japanese researchers entitled “Heritage Futures – what it is and why it matters” as the Canon Institute for Global Studies Future Design Workshop #88, hosted by the Future Design Research Center, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Kyoto, Japan (7 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an online meeting with Sofia Wikelid, researcher for Swedish Television’s planned programme on The Future in Sweden (11 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf gave a talk entitled “From Loss and Damage to Offering Solutions for the Future” at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, University of Linköping (13 November 2025).

Anders Högberg svarade på en Remiss om förslag till aktualiserad kulturmiljöstrategi för Kronobergs län 2026–2030 – Kulturmiljöer i en föränderlig tid (14 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg contributed to Linnaeus University’s Remisssvar till Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten concerning SKB’s Fud-research program for 2025 (14 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf hosted a guest lecture on “Mind the Gap” by Vicky Karaiskou, Chairholder, UNESCO Chair on Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy, Open University of Cyprus, in the context of a Doctoral Course at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities on Futures Literacy for Humanities Research, held (18 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf ran a Heritage Futures Workshop at a conference on Charting New Horizons for Education for Sustainable Development, organized by VolkswagenStiftung, German Commission for UNESCO and German Rectors’ Conference in Hannover, Germany (20 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf was invited to the Cultural Heritage Forum 2025 of the Cultural Heritage Academy to attend an afternoon at the University of Gothenburg dedicated to a discussion of the cultural canon for Sweden. He presented a talk entitled “Future canon – from historical to future-oriented frames of reference” and participated in a panel with, among others, Lars Trägårdh who had led the government’s Commission to suggest the content of such a cultural canon for Sweden (27 November 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting on “past-futuring” with Sophia Labadi, Professor of Cultural Heritage at the University of Kent, in Paris, France (1 December 2025).

During World Futures Day (2 December 2025) at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, Cornelius Holtorf had informal conversations with, among others, Clare Stark, Head of Unit for Foresight and Futures Literacy, SSH; Keith Holmes, Research Coordinator UNITWIN, Education; Maya Prince, UNESCO Chairs manager, Education; Karalyn Monteil, Head of Unit, Culture and Emergencies, Culture; Irakli Khodeli, new Head of Department, UNESCO MOST, SSH; Khaled El-Enany, new Director General for UNESCO.

Cornelius Holtorf submitted comments on the draft version of the ICOMOS International Charter for the Conservation of Earthen Architectural Heritage (10 December 2025).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in the Long-term Governance Network Meeting about ‘Long-term governance and wellbeing economics’ arranged by the School of International Futures (SOIF), featuring Katherine Trebek, Australia (political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change), Gareth Hughes, New Zealand (Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa), and Mads Falkenfleth, Denmark (Wellbeing Economy Lab) (11 December 2025).

Living Heritage in a Changing World

2025-12-21

I argued recently, that cultural heritage has much to contribute to the world’s future agenda. In particular, it can help normalize transformation, in a world that changes and needs to change. Heritage sites like Stonehenge in England have been absorbing comprehensive transformations over longs period of time. Their story is not a story of conservation and continuity, whether of a monument or of a living tradition, but it is a story of managing and adapting to all kinds of changes, by again and again becoming something else.

A new book by Xuanlin Liu, significantly entitled Living Heritage in a Changing World and based on her PhD thesis at the University of York, shows that something similar can be said about a type of artefacts. In relation to the ger, or yurt, a traditional dwelling of nomadic communities in Mongolia and China, Liu shows how heritage is an evolving, adapting, and therefore dynamic process:

“The Mongolian ger, initially crafted from simple wooden frameworks, has undergone significant transformations due to cultural, industrial and environmental imperatives. Over time, it has incorporated new materials such as iron, concrete and hybrid steel-wood structures, reflecting shifting policy landscapes and environmental concerns.” (p. 175)

Figure: some modern gers for sale on the internet.

In Liu’s analysis, these adaptations underscore the inherently fluid nature of heritage. She considers such continuous transformations as “instrumental in ensuring that heritage endures across diverse cultural and societal landscapes” (p. 177). Such an “inclusive, dynamic and comprehensive” understanding of the ger and, by implication, of other objects, is what makes heritage into “living heritage”.

This is a welcome and timely argument, reminding me of the wider implications of what I once argued in my own PhD thesis about the life histories of prehistoric monuments in Northeast Germany, written during the 1990s. It also links the study of movable heritage to ongoing discussions in other sections of Heritage Studies and heritage management, including those dealing with the preservation of historic buildings and the management of intangible heritage. Heritage policy and legislation will need to find more ways of accommodating these views, embracing change, adaptation and creation—ultimately increasing the benefits of heritage for living and future generations in changing societies.

Liu concludes: “In this new framework, the essence of cultural heritage is no longer limited to the preservation of its material form but centres on the creative transformation of its cultural logic.” This perspective, for her, makes heritage management “a creative, forward-looking cultural practice” (p. 182), and I agree.

EU Intergenerational Fairness

2025-12-20

The 2025 Scoping Report for the EU Intergenerational Fairness Strategy, under the remit of Glenn Micallef, European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, is a very interesting document for ‘heritage futures’. It does not give culture a specific role. But heritage and the past are explicitly considered, which is interesting.

The report stresses the benefits of “intergenerational dialogue” and adopts a perspective of human generations as “intertwined lives” resulting in “intergenerational solidarity”, leading to the conclusion that “it is our responsibility to care for past, current, and future generations’ well-being” (p. 13).

Significantly, the authors argue that “the intertwining can be extended to past generations, with their heritage, legacy and traumas, and future generations, with their needs, interests, and rights. (…) This new approach extends the focus from the now to a broader horizon, encouraging us to act as “a good ancestor” to future generations.” (p. 13)

The report expresses among the preliminary elements of a vision for an intergenerationally fair EU that what may be required includes “bringing the past and the heritage to enrich the long-term perspective” (p. 21).

These formulations remain a little vague and it remains open not only how we can care today for past generations’ well-being but also how the distinct contribution of heritage differs from that of knowing the past. But this is still the first time I can remember having seen in such a transnational document an explicit appreciation of a positive value of heritage in the context of future-making (and not just in the context of present-day benefits for living people or in relation to safeguarding existing forms of culture in the future).

Hopp och kultur

2025-12-09

Idag 9 dec 2025 höll vi en paneldebatt till temat “Att skapa hopp med kulturvetenskap – bortom katastrofen” på Kulturhuset Strömmen inom ramen för Nobelveckan i Kalmar kommun. Med

Johan Höglund, professor i engelska litteratur
Felicia Stenberg, doktorand i engelska litteratur
Ulrika Söderström, forskningssamordnare, Kalmar läns museum
Gustav Wollentz, lektor i arkeologi
Cornelius Holtorf, professor i arkeologi

Det blev en bra debatt mellan panelen och med publiken. Också en tjuvstart för ett nytt gemensamt projekt 2026 om Hopemaking…

Foto: Mathias Lafolie

Sammanfattning: vi lever i en tid då framtiden ofta framställs som hotfull – klimatkris, krig, oro och kollaps präglar både nyheter och populärkultur. Samtidigt finns ett växande behov av att föreställa sig något annat: att tänka och känna bortom katastrofen.

Kulturvetenskapen kan här spela en avgörande roll. Genom att undersöka våra berättelser, bilder och idéer om framtiden kan den hjälpa oss att odla hopp och handlingskraft i krisernas tid. Det är utgångspunkten för eftermiddagens samtal.

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Humanity’s Uranium

Decolonising the future