This report covers the seventh year of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University. Among the highlights of the year were several global occasions at which our Chair could contribute with perspectives on heritage futures. This included the ICOMOS General Assembly 2023 held in Sydney, Australia, where I was chairing a well-attended panel, the Dubai Future Forum in Dubai, UAE, where I contributed to a dedicated session, and UNESCO World Futures Day 2023 in December at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris where I was running a topical plenary panel.This spring, I spent three months as a Conservation Guest Scholar at the Getty in Los Angeles, USA. My project was entitled “Heritage in Transformation” and explored how, in a world where the future is not what it used to be, we can conceptualize the past and practice cultural heritage in correspondingly new ways. On various occasions throughout the year, we had the chance to meet and connect with UNESCO Chairholders from different corners of the world, working on culture, heritage, the future, and other questions. Such meetings and exchanges of views are always stimulating and important, not the least as it contributes to strengthening global trust and joint multilateral engagements for a better world. This report is published shortly after the 2024 UN Summit of the Future has been held in New York. The Summit agreed on a global Part for the Future and a Declaration on Future Generations, both of which referring to culture and cultural heritage. It will be exciting to follow how this will strengthen the case for heritage futures in Sweden and the other UN member states across the years to come.

This report covers the sixth year of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University. Among the highlights of the year were several global initiatives which our Chair could influence with its distinctive perspective on heritage futures that becomes ever better known. This included the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development MONDIACULT 2022 in Mexico City at the end of September. The conference established the significance of culture as a global public good and called for the inclusion of culture as a stand-along goal in the post-2030 international development agenda. One of the key contributions of futures thinking to global cultural policy is the notion of temporal interculturality, i. e. the mutability of culture and cultures over time, which was the topic of a panel I chaired at the Association of Critical Heritage Studies conference at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago de Chile in December 2023. The potential of cultural heritage for addressing the future challenges of climate change was addressed in an expert workshop to which I was invited at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, at the end of March 2024. During the subsequent months, I was writing up my ideas about the "Climate Heritage Paradox"—using the future for rethinking global heritage management (p.13). A topic that remains significant in our work is memory across generations related to repositories of nuclear waste. In this context, Sarah May co-edited a new volume on Toxic heritage, and Anders Högberg and I published a paper on "Nuclear Waste as Critical Heritage" that in some ways constitutes a conclusion of our decade-long research on these issues. Among the research projects listed below is a range of exciting new empirical research Chair members have been involved in over the past year. There were also several opportunities to meet and collaborate with other UNESCO Chairholders from different corners of the world. These are important occasions as they pave the way for global collaborations in new areas.

This report covers the fifth year of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University. As our university and much of the world came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, travelling gradually resumed while zoom meetings were here to stay too. Among the highlights of the year were several global initiatives to which our Chair could contribute with a distinctive perspective on heritage futures. This included the virtual International Co-sponsored Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change, strengthening synergies between culture and climate science and organized jointly by UNESCO, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) from 6 to 10 December 2021. Another important meeting was the regional online consultation for Europe and North America ahead of the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development MONDIACULT 2022 in Mexico (about which we will report in more detail next year).The Chair’s membership of the Climate Heritage Network provides an important context for some of this work.Over the past year, I have been advising a Pilot Foresight Study of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM). As foresight and cultural heritage are now more frequently being discussed it is of great importance that we can explain clearly the significance of heritage futures – which is what we have been working with in our new animation (see p. 3).Please get in touch if you have any comments or suggestions!

This report covers the fourth and final year for which the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at LinnaeusUniversity was originally established in 2017. During the entire year, our team continued to work underthe spell of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which meant a drastic cut of travelling and a similarly drasticincrease of virtual meetings hosted around the world.

In my keynote at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, I suggested threelessons for a post-corona archaeology:

1. Let’s take the future seriously and do our best to ensure that archaeology contributes to sustainabledevelopment benefitting future generations in concrete ways!

2. Let’s go beyond the notion of cultural diversity and focus on what people shared and share with eachother, promoting trust, solidarity and collaboration between all humans on this planet!

3. Let’s realise more often the value of culture, cultural heritage and archaeological practice for bringingpeople together, promoting peace both within any one society and between different societies!

A particular highlight of the year was the publication by Routledge of our book Cultural Heritage and theFuture (co-edited by C. Holtorf and A. Högberg, 2021).

At the end of the year, we received the excellent news that our Chair has been renewed byUNESCO for another four years. Please get in touch if you have any comments or suggestions.

Cornelius Holtorf, Professor of Archaeology and holder of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

Background

The UNESCO Chair Programme addresses pressing challenges in society. The chairs serve as think-tanks and bridge-builders between human communities, civil society, academia, and policy-making, generating innova-tion through research, informing policy decisions and establishing new teaching initiatives. The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University is one of eight UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and the only one in the area of culture.

Heritage futures are concerned with the roles of heritage in managing the relations between present and futuresocieties, e.g. through anticipation, planning, and prefiguration. Our work is dedicated to developingprofessional strategies that can enhance how heritage shapes the future. We ask questions such as: Which future do we preserve the heritage for? Which heritage will benefit future generations most? How can we build capacity in future thinking (futures literacy) among heritage professionals worldwide?

Over its first three years, the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University has been engaging in an extensive programme of national and international collaboration in research and training. We presented our work and agenda on many occasions in Sweden and around the world. In this report, we document the progress made by the entire team over our third year of activities. Please note especially the many topical publications this year.

The impact of Covid-19 meant that after mid-March our planned trips for research and conferences were cancelled. But it also meant that we got used to efficient meetings with colleagues in Zoom and other digital environments and that we had more time to write at home. We also got to think about the implications of the corona virus, which still holds the world in its grip, for heritage, heritage futures and the future of society at large (see following double page).

Background

Heritage futures are concerned with the roles of heritage in managing the relations between present and futuresocieties, e.g. through anticipation, planning, and prefiguration. Our work is dedicated to developingprofessional strategies that can enhance how heritage shapes the future. We ask questions such as: Which future do we preserve the heritage for? Which heritage will benefit future generations most? How can we build capacity in future thinking (futures literacy) among heritage professionals worldwide?

The UNESCO Chair Programme addresses pressing challenges in society. The chairs serve as think-tanks and bridge-builders between human communities, civil society, academia, and policy-making, generating innova-tion through research, informing policy decisions and establishing new teaching initiatives. The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University is one of eight UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and the only one in the area of culture.

The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University, in collaboration with the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM), ICOMOS International, ICOMOS Netherlands, and the City of Amsterdam, organizied an ICOMOS University Forum held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 11-14 June 2019. The Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and  Material Culture (AHM) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) hosted the meeting, which aimed at  promoting thinking and planning the future in heritage management. The main questions that were discussed during the meeting were: How do we perceive of the future? Which future and future generations do heritage professionals work for? What heritage will be needed in the future (and how do we know)? How can we build capacity in future thinking among heritage professionals worldwide?

The conference participants included scholars and heritage managers, both young and established, from different parts of the world. All in all, the ICOMOS University Forum brought together about 50 global heritage specialists from academia and professional practice, representing not only many European countries but also Australia, Brazil, China, India, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Singapore, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and the USA. During the meeting, participants enriched the discussion with their multicultural and multidisciplinary expertise.

Over its first two years, the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University has been engaging in an extensive programme of national and international collaboration in research and training. We presented our work and agenda on many occasions in Sweden and around the world. We established contacts to various programmes and activities in UNESCO, to the Swedish Delegation to UNESCO, the Swedish UNESCO Commission, and began collaboration with other UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and internationally. Over the past year we co-organized two large events in Stockholm and in Amsterdam. In this report, we document the progress made by the entire team over our second year of activities.

Background

Heritage futures are concerned with the roles of heritage in managing the relations between present and future societies, e.g. through anticipation and planning. Our work is dedicated to developing professional strategies that can enhance how heritage shapes the future. We ask questions such as: Which future do we preserve the heritage for? Which heritage will benefit future generations most? How can we build capacity in future thinking (futures literacy) among heritage professionals worldwide?

The UNESCO Chair Programme addresses pressing challenges in society. The chairs serve as think-tanks and bridge-builders between human communities, civil society, academia, and policy-making, generating innovation through research, informing policy decisions and establishing new teaching initiatives. The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University is one of eight UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and the only one in the area of culture.

Launched in 1992, the UNESCO Chair Programme addresses pressing challenges in society. The chairs serve as thinktanks and bridgebuilders between human communities, civil society, academia, and policy-making, generating innovation through research, informing policy decisions and establishing new teaching initiatives. In 2017 Linnaeus University was awarded a UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures.This is one of eight UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and the only one in the area of culture.

The Chair is dedicated to developing professional strategies concerning the role of heritage in shaping the future. We ask questions such as: how does specific heritage of various kinds contribute to improving future society? What heritage needs to be preserved for the benefit of future generations? When will these future generations live and what can we know about people's needs and desires in that future? How can different domains of heritage learn from each other regarding practices of future-making?