Global 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 Global 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.

Activities and events Spring 2021

March 26
12:00-13:00. Caroline Owman (University of Umeå) will speak about her PhD thesis entitled Det meränmänskliga museet: Konservatorns bevarandepraktik som en flyktlinje i modernitetens museum (in Swedish).
April 16
12:00-13:00. Text seminar: Gary Campbell & Laurajane Smith (2016), Keeping Critical Heritage Studies Critical: Why "Post-Humanism" and the "New Materialism" Are Not So Critical, conference paper presented at the third Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference, Montreal, Canada.
May 21
NOTE THE TIME! 09:00-10:00. Artist Tintin Wulia will present her new VR-funded project Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare (HDK-Valand)
June 10-12
Reopening the Bin: Waste, economy, culture and society International online conference, organised by School of Business, Economics and Law, GU. Register before April 15!
June 18
12:00-13:00. Elias Mellander (Gothenburg Research Institute) will speak about his research project Sustainable Wardrobes (see also his article Fashionable detachments: wardrobes, bodies and the desire to let go)