Will Heritage Save Us? Lecture by Chiara Bortolotto

On Thursday, 10 April 2025, the programme team co-organised a lecture by Chiara Bortolotto at the Historični seminar (Historical Seminar). In a lecture entitled “Will Heritage Save Us? Intangible Heritage and the Turn to Sustainable Development”, she explored the social world of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and the mainstreaming of sustainable development principles in the heritage field. She illustrated how sustainability priorities are expanding the frontiers of the heritage realm and unsettling conventional understandings of its social and political functions. An ethnographic description of UNESCO administrative practices and a set of case studies explained how the sustainabilization of intangible cultural heritage entails a fundamental shift in perspective: the safeguarding endeavor is no longer about us protecting heritage but about heritage protecting us.

More about Chiara Bortolotto.

The book Will Heritage Save Us? Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Sustainable Development Turn (2025).