PhD Workshop - Cultural Heritage and the 21st Century city

This workshop is conceived as a meeting to reflect on the situation, dynamics, discourses, theories and practices that affect the cultural heritage of cities today. A temporal perspective is taken as a reference in order to think critically about the challenges of research and management that affect all current dimensions of urban heritage:

• Cultural heritage and cities - a historical perspective
• The dimensions of urban cultural heritage - challenges of research and management
  • "Traditional" urban heritage
  • The "other" urban heritage
  • Cultural heritage in the age of the metaverse

The workshop will explore some main cross-cutting themes related to the current challenges of urban heritage. One or more of the following cross-cutting themes and the questions related to them might usefully inform the proposals for this workshop:

• The integral management of urban heritage
• Cultural heritage and the tourist city
• Social participation and engagement
• New perspectives: towards the smart urban heritage?

Visit the dedicated workshop website for further information

The outcomes and interactions of the workshop will be accessible to other PhD students from Una Europa universities on a special website including video/ audio captures, presentations and/ or blogs.

The duration of the workshop is 5 full days, during which the organizers will propose lectures, seminars, fieldwork, and meetings with museums, archives, heritage societies, NGOs, stakeholders in public history, intangible heritage, and heritage businesses.

The workshop will have an interactive format in order to facilitate communication and debates between PhD students.

The PhD students selected are expected to engage in active participation before, during and after the workshop. Please see below for a detailed programme of the workshop. The pre-workshop phase will take the form of several online lectures/seminars providing all participants with a general introduction to the concept of urban heritage. For the post-workshop phase, a half-day online seminar will be offered to PhD students.

The applicants should be enrolled in the Una Europa Doctoral programme in Cultural Heritage or be enrolled at one of the 8 participating Una Europa universities, in the 2nd year of doctoral studies or higher (at the time of the application).

There will be some grants offered by the 1Europe project funds of each participating university. Grants may cover travel to the hosting university, living and accommodation expenses.

Una Europa universities may give ECTS according to the regulations of their doctoral schools.

To apply for a place in the workshop, please submit the following documents to urbanCHunaeuropa@ucm.es by 30 September 2022:

• Abstract of the doctoral thesis (max. 500 words),
• Curriculum vitae (max. 2 pages),
• Letter of introduction from the thesis supervisor or other academic referee (max.300 words),
• Essay (2000-2500 words)

Candidates should submit a short essay referring to both the general concept of urban heritage and its challenges and to one of the four main cross cutting themes of the workshop. Our idea is to provide the candidates with an opportunity to reflect upon conflictual, disharmonic or polyphonic practices and interpretations of urban heritage in different contexts. Finally, we expect academic and critical essays which will include a presentation of a selected case(s) of urban heritage and at the same time will demonstrate the PhD student’s motivation to participate in this Una Europa event.

The applications will be assessed by the Scientific Committee according to the following criteria:

• Abstract of the doctoral thesis: max. 5 points
• Curriculum vitae: max. 10 points
• Essay: max. 25 points

The assessment of the essay will be based on the originality of the argument, analytical approach, and references to academic literature on the topic.
The workshop coordination will communicate the Scientific Committee’s decision to each PhD candidate.

The fourth Cultural Heritage PhD Workshop is one of the “Joint Innovative Formats” foreseen by Una Europa’s 1Europe project. Its goal is to experiment with innovative approaches to doctoral education and to contribute to our Joint Doctorate in Cultural Heritage offered by the Una Europa Universities, currently open for recruitment.