Dr Albert van der Zeijden Thesis Prize ceremony and heritage lecture by Rodney Harrison

On 16 February, the first ever Dr Albert van der Zeijden Thesis Prize will be awarded. Afterwards, Professor of Heritage Studies Rodney Harrison (UCL) will give the lecture entitled ‘Rethinking Heritage and Museums in and for the Climate Emergency’.

Dr Albert van der Zeijden Thesis Award

Kenniscentrum Immaterieel Erfgoed Nederland and Utrecht University award the Dr Albert van der Zeijden Thesis Award to a student who wrote an excellent thesis on the main theme of intangible heritage. The prize was introduced to stimulate research on intangible heritage. At the start of the programme, the life and work of Albert van der Zeijden will be highlighted, after which the winner of the prize will be announced.

Following this, Rodney Harrison will give his lecture, followed by a Q&A. Afterwards, there will be room for conversation over drinks.

Rethinking Heritage and Museums

The last few decades have witnessed the declaration of a series of interlinked ecological and cultural crises-of climate, history, race, and biological and cultural diversity-which have had and continue to have a fundamental impact on the planet and its human and non-human occupants alike.

Accordingly, Rodney Harrison’s talk draws on a number of recent international collaborative research projects which aim to address the role of heritage and heritage studies in the Anthropocene.

These projects have been characterised by collaborative partnerships with heritage sector organisations and other actors which have sought to intervene not only critically, but also practically in the role of natural and cultural heritage preservation within the climate and other related emergencies. They have done so by engaging organisations and publics as co-researchers in the research process and in aiming to rethink the conscious practical role of heritage in building distinctive future worlds.