Ingrid Martins Holmberg, senior lecturer at the Department of Conservation and research coordinator of Curating the City, Center for Critical Heritage Studies, has received 7.4 million SEK from Vetenskapsrådet, the Swedish Research Council, for the four year project Maintenance Matters. Exploring common contexts for heritage (e)valuation. Co-reasearcher is Dr. Elena Bogdanova, economic sociology.
− We are very excited to receive funding for this project since it strengthens a new direction in heritage research, says Ingrid Martins Holmberg. We will focus especially on how people that are deepley engaged in repair and care-taking of the existing built environment, relate to preservation principles and treat the fabric as traces of the past. These contexts are considered as core phenomena that enable for ‘the past’ to endure and remain in our contemporary modern world.
The purpose of the project is to explore enduring values and meanings found within common contexts of ‘maintenance and repair’, i. e craftsmanship and built heritage designation in urban settings. The aim of the research project is to provide new knowledge about what goes on within key situations of socio-material endurance. These are questions that are becoming more and more urgent and that require a better understanding of why, when and how people engage in caretaking, maintenance and repair.
For questions about the project, please contact Ingrid Martins Holmberg, ingrid.holmberg@conservation.gu.se
Photo by Ola Sandberg