2011 Leiden Centre for Global Heritage
A Centre for Global Heritage will be set up at Leiden University, that integrates the unique global breadth and quality of academic expertise at the University and the Leiden Museums with the global infrastructure of practical consultancy expertise built up over the past years by the Centre for International Heritage Activities (CIE) and the Faculty of Archaeology (Archol BV).
Primary partners in the Centre for Global Heritage will be the Faculty of Archaeology and the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of FSW and the Centre for International Heritage Activities. These partners already collaborate in setting up research and teaching projects at the graduate level with the participating museums RMV and RMO, and with potential partners such as the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Naturalis, and with the commercial Archol BV. Future cooperation between the Universities of Leiden, Rotterdam and Delft may lead to further partnerships.
Aim of the Centre is to be a multidisciplinary centre of research into all aspects of global heritage as well as a consultancy centre for international heritage projects that works on a commercial basis using available staff from participating organizations. The Centre aims to combine cutting-edge academic research on heritage management with on-the-job training of students at the MA/MSc and PhD levels by combining new academic frameworks for heritage management with ‘best practices’ on the ground, throughout the world.
The core Leiden imago of global coverage (‘in Leiden the sun never sets’) and the available expertise inspire a focus of the Centre on the “mutual”, global heritage of a post-colonial world rather than a focus on the European level. The Centre will start through formal cooperation agreements in more or less virtual form. Its commercial, legal, or academic relevance and feasibility will determine to what extent the centre will materialize as a more permanent institution.