Description of the research group

We are interested in the connections between art, heritage and ecology in the past and the present, and the role that museums and other cultural spaces can play in shaping more just and ecological worlds.  

We begin from the premise that art and heritage are deeply entangled with major societal and ecological issues. Under threat from environmental breakdown, funding cuts, and the resurgence of far right politics, art and heritage are also being called upon to reckon with their own colonial legacies. At the same time, art and heritage have proven potential to engage, inspire and motivate, helping individuals and communities to address urgent contemporary challenges, from climate justice to racial inequality. 

Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) addresses such issues by emphasising the political, cultural, and social dimensions of heritage, a broad field that embraces museums, archives, historic architecture, community art practices, intangible heritage and environmental conservation, alongside other forms of official and unofficial memory making. CHS is particularly concerned with the different ways the past is mobilised in the present to shape diverse futures. The term ecology, meanwhile, is understood to emphasise interrelationships and interactions between more-than-human actors within and beyond specific environments. Taking an ecological approach to heritage therefore means acknowledging and working with human and other-than-human agencies and processes in a way that transcends the traditional nature-culture divide.

The Critical Heritage Ecologies research group aims to shed light on the different ways in which heritage ideas and processes have shaped interactions between humans and their environments (and vice versa) in the past and the present. The group understands all forms of heritage – including that qualified as art and/or displayed in museums – as fully entangled with material-ecological worlds. Critical Heritage Ecologies seeks to reimagine the messy realities of heritage praxis. To this end, it will map and analyse heritage ideas and practices with an eye to the other-than-human processes and presences manifest in all heritage work. The project has a specific thematic interest in processes of repair and reparations; in environmental museology; and in collection histories and the nature-culture divide.

Envisaged Results

• PhD on contemporary participatory art and heritage practices and their engagement in processes of ecological reparation within contexts of social and environmental conflicts in Latin America, with a particular focus in Colombia (Maria Suarez).
• Edited book on Museum Ecologies (led by Colin Sterling)
• Co-authored articles related to the main research group themes
• Developing further grant proposals on related themes
• Regular reading group

Societal relevance

It is now abundantly clear that the ecological crisis will impact all aspects of social, cultural, political and economic life, with consequences unevenly distributed across diverse ecosystems and more-than-human communities. Heritage, art and museums have a vital role to play in shaping responses to this crisis to potentially bring about more just and sustainable ways of living. There are now wide-ranging discussions within and beyond the heritage field to consider issues of loss, repair, resilience and justice in relation to climate breakdown. The Critical Heritage Ecologies Research Group contributes to these urgent societal debates.

Research Group Type:
Reading Group | Project Group

Time schedule:

2024  Setting up research group; PhD recruitment
2025  Museum Ecologies workshop; Reading group on ecology and repair; Establishing wider network
2026  Further workshops and educational activities; grant application development
2027  Final symposium / conference

Group Coordinators

Members of the research group

Internal

• Dr. Selçuk Balamir, UvA Arts and Culture
• Dr. Diego Cagüeñas, UvA Arts and Culture
• Prof. Chiara de Cesari, UvA Arts and Culture
• Dr. Lani Hanna, UvA Arts and Culture
• Maria Suarez Caicedo, AHM

External

• Leah Niederhausen, Universiteit voor Humanistiek
• Sofia Lovegrove, Utrecht University