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UNESCO Launches Bibliography on the Implementation of the 2003 Convention

The 2003 Convention Research Bibliography provides an interactive bibliography of research references related to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and its implementation.

Based on work initiated in 2012, this project is hosted by UNESCO and led by an editorial group of independent researchers, with the support of volunteer researchers.

The bibliography is entirely searchable and intends to foster better communication among researchers working in the field of intangible cultural heritage and enhance dissemination of ICH-related research for all stakeholders involved in the implementation of the 2003 Convention (States Parties, communities, practitioners, civil society, UNESCO Secretariat and others).

Visit the Research Bibliography

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Call for Presentations: ICH in Urban Context

During the ICH-NGO Forum meeting (Bogota, Colombia, 7 – 14th December 2019), there will be a session on Sunday morning, 8 December 2019, dedicated to the topic of “ICH in an urban context: Cultural diversity and social cohesion.” This session has been prepared in cooperation with the National Heritage Board of Singapore and is a timely topic.

Over half of the population of the world now lives in urban areas—cities with millions of inhabitants and diverse communities. Cities such as Bangkok, Singapore, Bogota, and Rotterdam are facing multiple social and cultural challenges, not least due to processes of migration, the challenge of superdiversity, and social cohesion. Thinkers about superdiversity see evidence of emerging cosmopolitan cultural practices that build on social practices brought by migrant groups to new locales. These cultural practices are often reflected in public festivals and festivities. Festivals like Diwali are not just celebrated in India; they have become a permanent feature of Little India precincts all over the world. Similarly, other traditions such as Carnival or the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival are celebrated in major cities across the world.

During the ICH-NGO Forum meeting, there will be a session on Sunday morning, 8 December 2019, dedicated to the topic of “ICH in an urban context: Cultural diversity and social cohesion.” This session has been prepared in cooperation with the National Heritage Board of Singapore and is a timely topic. Over half of the population of the world now lives in urban areas—cities with millions of inhabitants and diverse communities. Cities such as Bangkok, Singapore, Bogota, and Rotterdam are facing multiple social and cultural challenges, not least due to processes of migration, the challenge of superdiversity, and social cohesion. Thinkers about superdiversity see evidence of emerging cosmopolitan cultural practices that build on social practices brought by migrant groups to new locales. These cultural practices are often reflected in public festivals and festivities. Festivals like Diwali are not just celebrated in India; they have become a permanent feature of Little India precincts all over the world. Similarly, other traditions such as Carnival or the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival are celebrated in major cities across the world.

Cities can be defined as contact zones where the global meets the local. As the text of the 2003 Convention noted, “processes of globalization and social transformation, alongside the conditions they create for renewed dialogue among communities, also give rise, as does the phenomenon of intolerance, to grave threats of deterioration, disappearance and destruction of the intangible cultural heritage.”

While intangible cultural heritage is often presented as a mainspring for cultural diversity, what about intangible cultural heritage in an urban context? What is intangible cultural heritage in an urban context and how is it transmitted and safeguarded? How can it contribute to social cohesion and renewed dialog among communities? Is there a role for city governments in adopting certain cultural policies?

During the session there will be six (or possibly more, which may then be accommodated in parallel sessions) short presentations, up to 10 minutes each, from cases from all over the world. Already scheduled are presentations from Singapore and Bogota. The session will be moderated by Albert van der Zeijden (ICH-NGO Forum, Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage) and Kirk Siang (National Heritage Board, Singapore). The moderators of this session are still looking for presentations from other regions, such as Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. NGOs attending the Intergovernmental Committee meeting in Bogota, and wanting to give a presentation, are invited to present an abstract (with a maximum of 200 words) before November 1 to Albert van der Zeijden, at a.vanderzeijden@immaterieelerfgoed.nl.

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Register for the 2019 World Forum for ICH

The 2019 World Forum for Intangible Cultural Heritage will be held from 10 to 12 October at the National Intangible Heritage Center (NIHC) in Jeonju, Republic of Korea. The forum is hosted by ICHCAP and organized by the NIHC.

The NIHC has organized the forum since 2017 to shape global discourse on the transmission and use of ICH. The third edition of the forum will bring together experts from sixteen countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and the Americas. The participants will examine the value of ICH for humanity and contemporary civic life, explore the positive role ICH plays in enriching civic life through learning and enjoyment and resolving social conflicts, and share their experiences.

View the program

Register here

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Call for Submissions: Digital Technologies and ICH

Call for Papers, videos and e-exhibitions

Submission Deadline 10th October 2019

MEMORIAMEDIA project (MI/IELT) has a peer reviewed e-journal dedicated to promote, communicate and document projects, studies and archives of INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE (ICH). For this issue, authors are invited to submit unpublished papers, videos or e-exhibitions about DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES and INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE for publication Dec 2019.

Read the full call here

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Registration open: Living Heritage in the Nordic Countries

International Conference on the Role of Communities and the Possibility for New Sustainable Societies  – Registration Deadline: Oct 9

Living heritage is a timely topic gaining awareness all over the world. In the era of global crises, where political instability, cultural alienation as well as political, religious and ideological extremism continue gaining validity, the seminar aims to tackle issues of sustainable development, social cohesion and cultural diversity within a context of cross-sectorial expertise.

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage has already been ratified by 178 countries that shows the willingness to act together for the safeguarding of living heritage. All the Nordic countries have ratified the Convention and cooperation across borders flourishes actively on versatile levels.

Now for the first time Nordic actors will gather together for a conference in Finland to discuss about safeguarding, joint projects and sharing good practices. As urged by the Faro Convention, the conference gives special focus on the role of communities and NGO’s.

The conference will consist of keynotes from all Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, including Greenland, Faroe Islands and Åland as well as from the Baltic countries. The presentations will highlight experiences in different fields of intangible heritage: performing arts, crafts, oral heritage, nature and social events. Several workshops will be held to give the participants room to interact with each other, learn together and to promote Nordic cooperation.

The conference is free of charge. The programme is targeted at anyone and everyone working with intangible heritage: practitioners, NGO’s, civil servants, researchers, museums professionals, etc.  The seminar language is English.

The seminar is organized by the Finnish Heritage Agency in co-operation with the Ministry of Education and Culture, Hanaholmen Cultural Centre, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish National Commission for UNESCO and the Royal Norwegian Embassy.

After the two-day conference the Arts Promotion Centre Finland facilitates a World Saving Clinic with the conference participants. Believing in the power of co-creation, the World Saving Clinic aims to empower experts in a new, bold future-oriented role.

View the full programme here

Register here

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ICICH Represented at Seminar on Digital Documentation in Korea

Three members of ICOMOS-ICICH participated in an international seminar, entitled “Protecting the Past for the Future: Digital Documentation as One of the Imperative Tools for Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage,” on 20 July 2019 at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul.

The morning session, which focused on new methodologies supporting the documentation of ICH through the application of new technologies included:

  • Community-based Inventories of ICH “Ecosystems” Using Photovoice and Arches, Angela M. Labrador
  • When Intangible Cultural Heritage becomes digital, Athanasios K. Moysiadis

  • Social Media a tool for documenting and knowledge transfer of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Monalisa Maharjan

Read about their presentations here.

Watch the video of the seminar here.

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ICOMOS-ICICH Represented at International Conference: Water as Heritage

ICOMOS-ICICH President, Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja, and Sergio Ribeiro, CIRAT Brazil, co-organized and chaired a session on “Worldviews on Water” at the Water as Heritage Conference in Taiwan, May 27 – May 31, 2019.

Download the entire program here.

Read the abstracts for the following presentations by clicking here:

  • Water: A Divine Gift from Allah to his People in the Islamic Religion and Environments, Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja, PhD, Independent Scholar-Helsinki; ICOMOS-ICICH
  • Water in its context of ecological and socio-cultural systems – opportunities in heritage policy, practice and research, from the Ramsar Convention to contemporary artists (and beyond), Dave Pritchard, Coordinator, Ramsar Culture Network
  • Worshipping Sacred Natural Sites as Heritage System of Safeguarding and Sustainable Use of Water Sources and Resources in Mongolia, Dr Professor Urtnasan Norov, President of Mongolian National Committee for ICOMOS
  • Indigenous World View: Water Ethics and Heritage, Mona Polacca, MSW, International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers; Indigenous World Forum on Water and Peace, Co-Secretariat

Images of the event

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Call for Participation: Association of Critical Heritage Studies 2020

The Fifth Biennial Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) will be held at University College London in the Summer of 2020. The conference’s theme – Futures – aims to engage seriously and critically with the often stated aims of heritage to address the concerns of future generations, whilst also asking participants to think expansively and creatively about the future of critical heritage studies as an emergent field of focus across a range of academic disciplines.

Sessions, discussion panels, papers, posters and films will explore a range of issues, including (but not limited to): the future of critical heritage studies; newly emerging concepts, themes and methods for the study of heritage; the future of heritage management, governance and diplomacy; evolving and nascent forms of heritage, and how they might be recognised; heritage as future-making; the “time” of heritage and its relationship with the past, present and future; future impacts of climatological, ecological, economic, political and social change on heritage; future relations of natural and cultural heritage in the light of the recognition of the Anthropocene; and the future of heritage itself.

Please see the conference website to learn more about the sub-themes and to submit your abstract.

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Call for Papers: Living the Cultural Routes – CIIC 2020

Scientific Meeting of the ICOMOS International Committee on Cultural Routes
10 – 17 February 2020 in Chihuahua, Mexico

Today, the consideration of the sense of heritage entails the idea of transversality and transmission to the new generations. For this reason, the CIIC has considered that on this occasion and having celebrated twenty-five years of uninterrupted work, the Scientific Meeting corresponding to 2020 is named “Living the Cultural Routes”, which will open the doors of the CIIC to ICOMOS Professionals and Emerging Professionals around the world, in order to show the meaning and importance of this category of heritage and distinguish new talents whose affinity makes them close to this research topic.

ICOMOS members are invited to submit the presentation abstracts by Friday, August 16, 2019

Download the entire call below:

Convocatoria Encuentro CIIC 2020 – inglés

Convocatoria Encuentro CIIC 2020 – francés

Convocatoria Encuentro CIIC 2020 – español

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Call for Abstracts: The Psychology of Heritage Places

Please consider this unique opportunity, below, to participate in solidifying a new field of study. 

Accepted papers will be published in a special collection in Collabra: Psychology, a refereed journal from the University of California Press. These papers will be open access (available to anyone over the Internet, free of charge) to an international audience. Even if you have never considered publishing on a topic related to environmental psychology, there is a wide range of possible paper types, and the opportunity to completely define new theoretical and research directions from the unique perspective of an ICH scholar.

The Psychology of Heritage Places

 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HERITAGE PLACES

Addressing a Neglected Area in Environmental Psychology

Second call for abstracts — special Collabra: Psychology research nexus

Co-editors:
Jeremy C. Wells, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park; jcwells@umd.edu.
Daniel J. Levi, Ph.D., Professor, Psychology and Child Development, Cal Poly; dlevi@calpoly.edu.
Erica Molinario, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park; molie@umd.edu.

Abstract submission deadline: August 30, 2019

The problem: Psychologists (and their proponents) do not appear interested in built heritage

Attention from psychologists in people-historic environment contexts is minimal. Regardless of the authors’ disciplines, scholarly articles, chapters, and books that address built heritage from a social science perspective fail to use methods from environmental and/or social psychology. In sum, with few exceptions, there is no representation from psychology in the social science literature that addresses built heritage. (Some of these exceptions are Ahn [2013], Askari, Dola, and Soltani [2014], Herzog and Gale [1996]; Herzog and Shier [2000], Levi [2005], Uzzell [2009], Wells and Baldwin [2012], and Wells [2017].) This special research nexus is therefore a call to action for researchers interested in validating the psychology of heritage places as an acceptable and needed area of research.

Why a psychological perspective on built heritage?

Environmental psychologists care about how the design of new buildings and places impact people and their behavior, but for some reason have overlooked the study of heritage environments. Or, in a more critical sense, psychologists have long neglected a normal part of everyday human experience. Traditionally understood to be closely associated with the fields of design, architecture, and history, built heritage conservation is increasingly being reconceptualized as a social science endeavor, especially through the rise of what has become known as “critical heritage studies” (Harrison 2013; Smith 2006; Winter 2013).

What are the fundamental characteristics that define research in the psychology of heritage places?

For the purposes of this special collection, submitted papers need to consider these
three fundamental characteristics associated with heritage places and social and environmental psychology:  

  1. A central focus on old or “historic” environments from a theoretical and/or empirical perspective;
  2. Research methods primarily associated with environmental psychology, such as behavioral mapping, environmental attitude measurement, phenomenologies, visual preferences, simulated environments, post occupancy evaluations, and neuroscience, among other possibilities;
  3. A theoretical construct based on place identity, place attachment, environmental perception, and the settings in which certain behaviors occur.

How you can contribute to this research nexus

All papers are welcome that address the historic environment and psychological perspectives in some way. While submissions from trained psychologists are especially encouraged, there is no disciplinary requirement. Authors from other disciplines should approach their work through methodological and/or theoretical approaches from social and/or environmental psychology. Specific suggestions for areas that papers could address include:

  1. How a psychological approach could improve historic preservation/built heritage conservation practice;
  2. Neuroscience applied to the perception of and behavior in historic environments;
  3. A focus on senescent environments, or built environments that are defined by the way their materials change and degrade over time. This could include studies on the perception of decay and patina and their emotional effect on people;
  4. Studies that address the psychological dimensions of perceived and experiential authenticity;
  5. Analyses of historic preservation/heritage conservation doctrine and/or rules and regulations from a psychological perspective;
  6. Addressing social justice and equity issues by providing an empirical basis for heritage conservation practice that is largely lacking today;
  7. Cross-cultural, psychological perspectives on historic environments;
  8. Registered reports. Because it is likely that most prospective authors seeing this call for abstracts have not yet started research on a topic, this type of paper describes the research question(s), methods, and proposed analyses for research that is being proposed, but not yet implemented.

How to submit an abstract proposal for a paper

All interested authors should first submit a 300-word abstract by August 30, 2019 that proposes one the following types of papers: original research report, review article, perspective/opinion article, or a registered report. Because of the current paucity of research in this area, registered reports are especially encouraged because they focus on proposed, rather than completed, research. For more details, see https://www.collabra.org/about/submissions/.

Authors should email their abstract with their full name, contact information, and institutional affiliation to Jeremy C. Wells (jcwells@umd.edu) with “Collabra: Psychology abstract” in the message subject. Successful authors will be invited to submit a full paper that will then undergo the normal peer review process for the journal.

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