22nd Cambridge Heritage Symposium
Confronting Uncertainty: Heritage Pasts and Presents in Flux
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge
19-20 May 2022
Heritage is used as an anchor – a generator of certainty that keeps our senses of self and identity secure, reaffirming our feelings of place and belonging through turbulent times. Heritage is turned to as a constant in times of change. Increasingly, however, this security we search for in heritage has been thwarted. While the future has always been uncertain, now the seemingly firm foundations of the past have been unsettled. We have seen more recently how previously accepted national narratives are being reckoned with, particularly in the contexts of empire, slavery and colonialism. The perceived stability of heritage has thus been shaken to its core, unsettled by challenges about its origin, ownership, purpose, and manifestations.
This conference sought to explore the links between heritage and uncertainty in our pasts and presents. Proposals were invited addressing heritage issues from across these two timeframes.
Venue
The 22nd Cambridge Heritage Symposium was held as a hybrid online and in-person event for speakers and attendees.
Date and Time
The 22nd Cambridge Heritage Symposium took place on Thursday 19 and Friday 20 from 10:00 to 17:00 UK time (BST).
Registration
Registration for this event is now closed.
Keynote Speakers
The Cambridge Heritage Research Centre were delighted to host our distinguished Keynote Speakers for this Cambridge Heritage Symposium.
Uncertain Pasts |
Professor Erin L. ThompsonSchrödinger’s Past: Indeterminate Interpretations of Controversial Public Memorials |
| Erin L. Thompson holds a PhD in Classical Art History and a JD, both from Columbia University. She is an associate professor of art crime at John Jay College (City University of New York), where she studies the damage done to cultural heritage and communities through looting, theft, and deliberate destruction of art (as well as its deliberate preservation). She is the author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors (Yale, 2016) and Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments (Norton, 2022). |
Uncertain Presents |
Professor Þóra PétursdóttirSustainable Uncertainty: Nature, Heritage and Change |
| Þóra Pétursdóttir is Associate Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo. Her research combines contemporary archaeology, heritage studies and environmental humanities and draws strongly on the theoretical frameworks of New Matierialisms and Posthumanities. Her previous work has focused on (among other matters) the topic of material memory and suggested a more constructive understanding of material processes such as decay/ruination/fragmentation in heritage contexts. She has also explored understandings of the Anthropocene in archaeology and reflected on how climate change challenges archaeological thinking and practice. Her work has always transgressed and problematised the boundary between nature and culture. This divide, and the “nature of heritage” writ large, is also the focus of her current research where notions of sustainability and more-than-human ethics are of central concern. This is the focus of her ongoing research project Relics of Nature: An Archaeology of Natural Heritage in the High North ( www.relicsofnature.com ), which assembles a team of interdisciplinary scholars to rethink matters of loss, transience, sustainability and ethics in a changing world. |
Programme
Day 1 - Uncertain Pasts
10:00-16:30, Thursday, 19 May 2022
10:00 Registration
10:30 Welcome Address
10:45 Keynote Lecture - Prof Erin L. Thompson
Schrödinger’s Past: Indeterminate Interpretations of Controversial Public Memorials
Keynote Q & A
11:45 Break
12:05 Session 1: Politics and Nationalism
13:05 Lunch
14:05 Session 2: (Un)certainty and Materiality
15:05 Break
15:35 Session 3: Uncertainty and Colonialism
18:45 Conference Dinner (Millworks, Cambridge)
Day 2 - Uncertain Presents
10:00-16:30, Friday, 20 May 2022
10:00 Keynote Lecture - Prof Thora Petursdottir
Sustainable uncertainty: Flux and the natures of heritage
Keynote Q & A
11:00 Break
11:20 Session 4: Widening Definitions of Heritage
12:20 Lunch
13:20 Session 5: Heritage Interpretation and Management
14:20 Break
14:40 Session 6: Risk
15:40 Concluding Remarks