Professor Sophia Labadi’s latest research aims to understand whether and how heritage has contributed to key dimensions of sustainable development, within the context of the marginalisation of heritage from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and previous international development agendas.
Professor Labadi will present some of her results at the upcoming ICOMOS-UK event taking place on Wednesday 4 November from 19.00 – 20.00 GMT with her talk titled, ‘Rethinking Heritage for development: International Framework, Local Impacts’. Provocative in its approach, this talk will focus on some of the key issues and contradictions preventing intangible and tangible heritage from contributing fully to sustainable development, as fundamental pre-requisites need to be met first. Professor Labadi will discuss in particular the danger with SDG 11.4 and its focus on the protection and safeguarding of heritage, which contributes to the continued and unhelpful opposition between heritage and development. The understanding of authenticity as unchanging will further be discussed, as heritage and associated rightsholders become frozen in time. Finally, the lack of consideration of heritage as political and as having some potentially negative impacts will also be considered.
This research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Caligara Foundation. Its official partners are ICOMOS-UK and the African World Heritage Fund.