Dr Sophia Labadi from the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies is organising a Centre for Heritage conference at the University of Kent, to be held 23 to 24 June 2014.
The conference title is ‘New Approaches to Heritage Ethics: Interdisciplinary conversations on heritage, crime, conflicts and rights’. Heritage and ethics are too often considered through the lens of a single, specific theme. For instance, analyses commonly focus on separate topics like crime and heritage (e.g. unlawful excavations, vandalism and the removal or theft of cultural property), conflict and heritage (e.g. war, civil unrest, iconoclasm as well as disputes of competing visions of the past), and rights and heritage (e.g. access to cultural and socio-economic rights through heritage initiatives, in particular for disfranchised groups).
Submissions that consider the following themes are particularly welcomed:
- Looting of classical and archaeological sites and conflict;
- Relationships between looting of classical and archaeological sites and social and economic rights and opportunities;
- Engagements of communities in the prevention of vandalism and the willful destruction of heritage;
- Approaches for taking account of conflicting understandings and visions of the past;
- Practical issues in the promotion of cultural, social and economic rights through heritage;
- Theoretical and applied approaches for preventing and mitigating heritage crime and conflicts, or for promoting social and economic rights through culturally- and historically-minded means;
- Critical approaches to the legal regulation of heritage with particular emphasis on rights.
Abstracts in English (250 words maximum should be sent to s.labadi@kent.ac.uk by 3 February 2014. Selected papers might be published after the conference.
For more information, please visit the Centre for Heritage website: http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/researchcentres/centre-for-heritage