Armed conflicts pose a direct threat to cultural heritage. Even if they do not necessarily take place close to us, armed conflicts are almost always a reality somewhere. Europe was devastated by the world wars and had to be rebuilt, cultural heritage sites were targeted in the Middle East, a war has been raging in Yemen for years, and the war against Ukraine shows us once again the urgency of having to protect cultural property in the case of conflicts. They pose a particular challenge for the protection of monuments, as action must be taken quickly and under extreme conditions, and monuments cannot be recovered and safely stored.
Furthermore, there is insufficient experience with monument protection in conflict areas and the development of the respective situation is hardly predictable.
As many future heritage professionals are concerned by these challenges, ICOMOS Denmark, ICOMOS.
ICOMOS’ Emerging Professionals Initiative
In 2016, ICOMOS International decided to launch an initiative to create greater involvement of young professionals in the field of cultural heritage and involving young people in ICOMOS’ activities. This led to the creation of “ICOMOS Emerging Professionals” (EP). ICOMOS has approximately 590 members worldwide who have been admitted as members of the Emerging Professionals category. The purpose of the EP group is to create knowledge exchange and learning for younger professionals, so that together we strengthen our professionalism within the area of cultural heritage and create a network that will benefit both younger professionals, but also ICOMOS members in general. ICOMOS Germany and ICOMOS Denmark want to further develop and strengthen their Emerging Professionals groups – this international Summer School is part of this initiative.
For whom?
Emerging Professionals (Young professionals and students under the age of 35 or with a maximum of years of experience, working or studying in the field of cultural heritage)
ICOMOS members
Practitioners in the cultural heritage field.
Program
The first day of the Summer School provides lectures on heritage and its protection in past, ongoing and acute armed conflicts. These will be presented by Søren la Cour Jensen, Salma Samar Damluji and representatives of the ICOMOS’ International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness (ICORP). Afterwards, participants will choose a group topic to work on. Topics can be suggested in the online registration for the Summer School. The second day contains a keynote by Andreas Georgopoulos and group working sessions where you will be working on the selected topics and prepare an outcome (e.g. a poster, written document, essay, collage, or any creative way of presentation). On 1st July, the last day, the outcomes will be presented by the groups and discussed in a final session.
24th June
13:00 Welcome and Introduction
13:15 Keynote 1 – Søren la Cour Jensen – Blue Shield Denmark
13:35 Keynote 2 – Salma Samar Damluji – American University of Beirut
13:55 Keynote 3 – Chris Marrion and the colleagues of ICORP – Conflict and Heritage: Opportunities in Monitoring and Response
14:40 Discussion
15:15 Break
15:30 Presentation of the topics for the working sessions and kickoff of group work 16:30 Presentations of the chosen outcome (2min/group)
17:00 end
25th June
10:00 Welcome to day 2
10:10 Keynote 4 – Andreas Georgopoulos – National Technical University of Athens, CIPA Heritage documentation
10:30 Discussion
10:40 Working sessions (groups working on chosen topics)
Open end
1st July
13:00 Welcome to day 3
13:10 Presentation of the working sessions and the outcomes (à 10-15 min) 15:30 Final discussion
