5th Annual Heritage Lecture

Material Ghosts: Resurgent Social Relations and the Organization of Lived Space

Professor Rodney Harrison

UCL Institute of Archaeology

This lecture was given on Thursday 24th February 2020 online due to Covid 19 Restrictions. 

A recording of the lecture can be found on our Resources Page

About the lecture

The last few decades have witnessed the declaration of a series of interlinked ecological and cultural crises-of climate, history, race, and biological and cultural diversity-which have had and continue to have a fundamental impact on the planet and its human and non-human occupants alike. Accordingly, this talk draws on a number of recent international collaborative research projects which aim to address the role of heritage and heritage studies in the Anthropocene. These projects have been characterised by collaborative partnerships with heritage sector organisations and other actors which have sought to intervene not only critically, but also practically in the role of natural and cultural heritage preservation within the climate, extinction and race crises. They have done so by engaging organisations and publics as co-researchers in the research process and in aiming to rethink the conscious practical role of heritage in building distinctive future worlds. 

About our speaker

Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, where he is Co-Director of the Joint UCL/University of Gothenburg Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (CCHS). His work has been central to the establishment of critical heritage studies as a topic of research and teaching. From 2017-2021 he was AHRC Heritage Priority Area Leadership Fellow, from 2015-2019 he was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Heritage Futures research programme, and from 2016-2021 he led the Work Package on “Theorizing heritage futures in Europe: heritage scenarios” as part of the European Commission funded Marie Sklodowska-Curie action [MSCA] Doctoral Training Network CHEurope: Critical Heritage Studies and the Future of Europe. He is (co)author or (co)editor of 20 books and guest edited journal volumes and almost 100 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Some of these have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Polish and Portuguese language versions. In addition to the AHRC his research has been funded by the UKRI/Global Challenges Research Fund, British Academy, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the European Commission. He has conducted archaeological, anthropological and/or archival research in Australia, Southeast Asia, North America, South America, the Middle East, UK and continental Europe. His most recent books, all co-authored/edited and available in open access, include Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices (UCL Press, 2020), Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2020) and Reimagining Museums for Climate Action (Museums for Climate Action, 2021).