Dr Carsten Paludan-Miller

Carsten Paludan-Müller is an archaeologist, PhD from the University of Copenhagen 1980. He has held various leading positions within museums and heritage management in Denmark.

From 2003 to 2017 he was the General Director of NIKU, The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. After his retirement he spent a year of extensive travelling to collect material for his ongoing work with cultural heritage and conflict in research and in hands-on-projects.

Since 2010 he has been occupied with cultural heritage as a medium for cooperation between Turkish and Armenian heritage experts. The focus has been particularly on Armenian heritage in Eastern Anatolia.

Related to this is Carsten Paludan-Müller's research focus on the geopolitics of heritage. The aim is to develop the understanding of how long historical processes are themselves mirrored in our definition, perception and use of cultural heritage. And of course, in how its objects came into existence and developed, before becoming defined as heritage.

In that context an important focus is the role of premodern and early modern empires across Eurasia in the formation of what we today understand as cultural heritage. Much of this formation happened through exchange, fusion, and recombination of cultural elements within and between the empires and their diversity of cultures. Out of this arises the key question of, how that cultural entanglement is dealt with in postimperial processes of nation building.

Carsten Paludan-Müller, has worked/works as an expert with the Council of Europe, the European Commission, Anadolu Kültür, the Norwegian MFA and the World Bank. He was involved as a scientific advisor in the CRIC project (Cultural heritage and the reconstruction of identities after conflict). He is a board member of the Danish ICOMOS Committee, and a deputy member of The Danish Environment and Food Board of Appeal.