The last few decades have witnessed the declaration of a series of interlinked ecological and cultural crises which have had (and continue to have) a fundamental impact on the planet and its human and non-human occupants alike. This talk presents a number of recent international collaborative research projects which aim to explore the ways in which the cultural sector might support action for climate empowerment and (just) green energy transitions. These projects have been characterised by collaborative partnerships with museums and heritage sector organisations and their publics which have sought to intervene not only critically, but also practically in the role of natural and cultural heritage preservation within these contemporary crises of climate, extinction and social justice. They have done so by engaging organisations and publics as co-researchers in the research process and in aiming to rethink the practical role of heritage and museums in (re)imagining and (re)building more sustainable and just futures.
Rodney Harrison (Professor of Heritage Studies, University College London), Colin Sterling (Associate Professor of Heritage and Museum Studies, University of Amsterdam), Janna Oud-Ammerveld (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Utrecht University) and David Francis (Postdoctoral Research Associate, University College London).
All four are members of the Horizon Europe funded PITCH project, exploring the contribution of heritage and museums to green energy transitions.
Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at University College London. Rodney’s current research focuses on the contributions that heritage and museums can make to postcolonial justice, anti-racist initiatives, and the climate and extinction crises. He has conducted archaeological, anthropological and/or archival research in Australia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, South America, the Middle East, UK and continental Europe. He is founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, and founding vice chair/president of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (2011-2017).
Colin Sterling is Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museums and the Environment at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches across heritage and memory, museum studies and artistic research. Colin's research focuses on the political and ecological dimensions of heritage and museums in the past and the present. He is the author of Heritage, Photography, and the Affective Past (Routledge, 2020) and has co-edited several books, including most recently Aesthetics of Geopower: Contested Planetary Imaginaries (Edinburgh University Press, 2027). He is editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues.
Janna oud Ammerveld is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History and Art History at Utrecht University. Her research explores the connections between petromodernity, climate change and cultural heritage. She gained her PhD from University College London in 2022.
David Francis is a postdoctoral researcher in the UCL Institute of Archaeology. His research sits at the intersection between museology, heritage and cultural memory studies with a particular focus on how narrative manifests in and across these fields. Alongside his research, David has worked for almost 20 years in the museum and heritage sector internationally in the field of interpretation and narrative development.
Header image: Reimagining Museums for Climate Action Exhibition at the COP26 Green Zone, November 2021. Courtesy Glasgow Science Centre. Photographs by Stuart Wallace.
