Critical Heritage Studies
Approaching heritage critically, this research group investigates how heritage intersects with global issues such as identity politics, commemoration of conflict and disasters, or sustainability and climate change. The aim is to develop and support research collaboration within this field in order to build a strong and creative research environment.
About us
This research group investigates heritage from a critical perspective, exploring how contemporary political, economic, social and cultural processes draw on, but also shape and construct, particular configurations of past, present and future.
Research projects linked to the group focus on questions such as:
- How is the concept of heritage understood, practiced and consumed within different social and cultural contexts?
- How is heritage implicated in tourism, identity politics, and in relation to rights, property and ownership?
- How are memory processes, traditions and heritage used in reconciliation processes?
- How does heritage intersect with other concepts related to time, transition and temporality in challenges such as climate change and the Anthropocene?
The goal of the research group Critical Heritage Studies, which is linked to the UGOT Challenges initiative the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies and the cluster Making Global Heritage Futures, is to develop and support research collaboration within this field in order to build a strong and creative inter- and transdisciplinary research environment. This is achieved through seminars in which we read key texts, or texts related to participants’ on-going projects or research applications, as well as listen to invited guest speakers.
Welcome to the following events! Bring lunch and join us in room C417, At the School of Global Studies.
November 11, 12.00-13.00
Dust in the Deformation Zone: what ruins and ruination can tell us about maintenance and its lack, in Kiruna, Sweden. Eric Boyd, PhD with Durham Arctic Interdisciplinary Research Group, Durham and Visiting Researcher at SGS.
December 16, 12.00-13.00 - CANCELLED. NEW DATE: 27 Jan, 2023.
Transitional Justice for Indigenous Communities. Sara L. Ochs, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Louisville, USA, postdoc at SGS.
December 13, 10.00-12.00 (beginning with Lucia fika at 9.30)
Making Global Heritage Futures Winter Seminar:
From sustainable waste buckets to dark sky heritage.
Participants: Veera Kinnunen, University of Oulu; Dominique van de Klundert, Freie Universität Berlin; Caroline Owman, Stockholm University; Thomas Laurien, GU; Staffan Appelgren and Anna Bohlin, GU.
For questions, contact Staffan Appelgren or Anna Bohlin.
Research projects
- Circular economy in the public sector
Anna Bohlin and Staffan Appelgren, with RISE and the City of Gothenburg - Dealing with difficult pasts: A comparative study of Benin exhibitions in Britain, Germany, Nigeria and the USA
Staffan Lundén - Famines as mass-atrocities: Reconsidering violence, memory and justice in relation to hunger
Camilla Orjuela and Swati Parashar - Fishing for solutions: Community economies and sustainable coastal development in Sweden
Sebastian Linke, Maris Gillette, Milena Arias Schreiber - Genocide memorial museum in post-conflict societies: A case study of Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia
Savina Sirik - Heritage of silence: Absence, loss and ambiguity as post-war legacy
Marita Eastmond - Mining for tourists in China
Maris Gillette - Living (with) things: Consuming, collecting and caring
Anna Bohlin and Staffan Appelgren, with Museum of World Culture - Reconciliatory heritage: Reconstructing heritage in a time of violent fragmentations
Michael Landzelius (main applicant), Mikael Baaz, Evren Uzer von Busch, Klas Grinell, Feras Hammami, Mona Lilja and Ola Sigurdson - Re:heritage: Circulation and marketization of things with history
Anna Bohlin and Staffan Appelgren - Seeking justice from afar: Diasporas and transitional justice
Camilla Orjuela
