Annual Heritage Lecture
The Annual Heritage Lecture invites speakers of international reputation to give a public lecture on an aspect of heritage research. Previous speakers have included leading names in Heritage research such Professor Laura Jane Smith and Professor Rodney Harrison.
9th Annual Heritage Lecture
The Cambridge Heritage Research Centre 9th Annual Heritage Lecture was given on Friday 20th February 2026 at Jesus College by Professor Cornelius Holtorf of Linneaus University, Sweden.
Decolonising the Future: From Preserving Memory across Generations to Sustaining the (Re-)Generation of Memory
A Recording of the lecture can be found on our Resources Page
About the Lecture
The field of ‘heritage futures’ explores the roles cultural heritage plays in negotiating relations between present and future societies. In many contemporary contexts, cultural heritage is to be preserved explicitly for the benefit of future generations. Such efforts are typically grounded in the assumption that present-day values and narratives of heritage will be shared and appreciated in the future. The preservation of cultural heritage may indeed create benefits, much as a less polluted, better preserved, and more sustainable natural environment is likely to benefit those who come after us. Implicitly, we expect our preservation practices to ensure that we will be remembered as good ancestors.
Yet to what extent do the tangible and intangible legacies we leave behind constitute attempts to establish control over future human (and indeed some non-human) beings? Does heritage preservation inadvertently colonize those who will live in the future by imposing our present-day values and priorities upon them? If so, is this problematic in ways comparable to the colonisation of living peoples in the past, a legacy with which we are still grappling today? Do we therefore need to decolonize the future?
I address this challenge by asking how we might make sense of the past through memory in a world where the future is not what it used to be. Two case-studies will help me to explore what this shift may entail. Both concern forms of memory and heritage created in the present to benefit the future, and both relate to nuclear power, a domain that has long provoked existential questions about the future of humanity. First, I examine the memorialisation of the 3/11 disaster, following the major earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan’s north eastern coast in 2011 and led to the nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Second, I consider strategies designed to preserve awareness of nuclear waste repositories across many generations and for up to one million years.
In conclusion, I invite the audience to consider an alternative approach to heritage futures that may, in fact, reflect how memory has always functioned (because the future may never have been what it used to be). I propose moving away from present-day strategies aimed at transmitting memory unchanged across generations, towards an acceptance of continuous processes of (re-)generating memory and the changes this entails. My point is that it may not be the values we currently ascribe to heritage that endure over time, but rather the processes through which heritage is continually revalued. Can and should such a post-preservational approach contribute to decolonizing the future?
About the Speaker
Cornelius Holtorf is Professor of Archaeology and holds a UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden. He also directs the Graduate School in Contract Archaeology (GRASCA) at his University. Having collaborated for many years with the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) and other major stakeholders in the nuclear waste sector, he is currently directing the project “Memory across Generations”. His research interests lie in contemporary archaeology, heritage theory and heritage futures. Cornelius was a Co-Investigator and led the Uncertainty theme of the Heritage Futures research programme.
