Whose Past? Managing Endangered Cultural Heritage

The programme aims to educate students on the issues of the destruction and protection of both tangible and intangible heritage.

In an era of demographic, urban, and climatic pressures, as well as ongoing wars at the gates of Europe, heritage is increasingly subjected to threats of destruction, sometimes accidental, sometimes intentional. 

This programme seeks to explore political issues and the instrumentalization of heritage by state actors. Students are encouraged to develop a critical, constructive, and inclusive response to these challenges.

By gaining expertise in national and international legal frameworks, students will also develop awareness and practical tools (such as mediation and digitalization) that can be shared by institutional decision-makers and citizens alike. 

The teaching team’s expertise, drawn from diverse backgrounds and countries, with a particular focus on ancient Western Asia - where issues of endangered cultural heritage have been particularly pressing in recent years - will offer students a broad and varied perspective.

Furthermore, archives of UNESCO World Heritage sites, such as Arslantepe, Palmyra, and Petra, will be presented to students, offering relevant case studies where experiments with digital tools have yielded valuable insights.

This course is a continuation of the previous one, on the same topic, that was carried out by the same four partners last year. To assess students' learning, the course includes an online component as well as mandatory reading material. 

The Madrid-based component (see programme) will give students the opportunity to deliver an oral presentation and share their thoughts and comments on the readings and topics studied during the online component. These readings are intended to prepare students for the field visits and to encourage critical thinking and reflection on the construction of cultural identities from a colonial and postcolonial perspective (learning outcome).

• Cultural heritage and identity
  
• Digital technologies applied to cultural heritage
• International law on cultural heritage
  
• Use and abuse of cultural heritage
• Illicit trafficking of cultural goods
• Ways to deal with archaeological archives of UNESCO sites

At the end of the course, the students will:

• be able to interpret what defines heritage at risk;
• be able to ​identify examples of heritage at risk;
• be able to reach agreements on how to intervene to save it;
• know (at least part of) the history behind this heritage;
• become aware of the political issues and risks of instrumentalization related to both the definition and management of Cultural Heritage;
• become familiar with basic international and national norms and legal framework related to Cultural Heritage;
• identify, analyse and anticipate risks incurred by Cultural Heritage in its multiple formats and define the accurate answers to provide, taking advantage of past experiences, including errors;
• use digital humanities as a knowledge and prevention tool;
• develop inclusiveness and co-responsibilities of audiences.

The Physical mobility section of the course will be held between 15-19 February 2026 in Madrid (Spain):

Monday, 15 February

• 09:00 – 13:00: welcoming session with greetings from UAM head of the Department and Professors of the teaching staff; presentation of the activities carried out by the teaching staff at Madrid dealing with endangered cultural heritage; explanation of the students presentations and evaluations at the end of the physical component;
• 15:00 - 17:00: visit to the Blanco Freijeiro classroom to learn about the history of the ancient Near East and Egypt; workshop on recovering history and setting up a dialogue for museum displays.

Tuesday, 16 February

• 10:00 – 13:00: visit to the UAM Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in the center of Madrid; workshop on intangible culture and how traditions form part of our lives;
• 15:00 - 18:00: prepare a group project, then present and discuss how very different traditions can coexist thanks to migration.

Wednesday, 17 February

• 10:00 – 13:00: visit to the Museum of America and the Moncloa area in Madrid. Here, the distant and recent past coexist, both controversial, potentially influencing the debate on the meaning of cultural heritage;
• 15:00 - 18:00: workshop exhibition and debate exploring how colonial and postcolonial discourses influence our analysis and discussions about the past. How can we incorporate these conversations into museums?

Thursday, 18 February

• 09:00 – 13:00: visit to Madrid de los Austrias (searching for the remains of Muslim Madrid) and the Museum of the Origins of Madrid;
• 15:00 - 17:00: workshop and discussion on how we narrate our history, what remains of it in cities, and how we can construct different discourses depending on our ideology or intentions.

Friday, 19 February

• 09:00 – 13:00: tour of the UAM facilities, a small campus located near the mountains and close to Madrid; learn about the history of its creation; later, there will be a presentation carried out by the students during the course.
• 15:00 - 17:00: students’ works presentations and discussion among all participants, followed by an evaluation by the teaching staff; recap of everything covered in the course, followed by an evaluation by teachers and students; farewell and closing; farewell refreshments.

The virtual part will take place on Fridays, between 2 October - 11 December 2026, as following:

• ​2 October, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET - General Introduction: presentation of the teaching staff, explanation of the course contents;
• ​9 October, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Cultural Heritage and Identity (Laurent Tholbecq);
• 16 October, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: International and national Legal framework (Patrick Michel, Marina Gallinaro);
• 23 October, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Cultural Heritage at risk  (Lucia Mori, Lorenzo Verderame, Davide Nadali, Francesca Ballossi Restelli, Laurent Tholbecq);
• 30 October, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanitites. Practical Approaches (Patrick Michel, Lorenzo Verderame);
• 6 November, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Iraqi heritage destroyed. Memory at risk (Carmen del Cerro Linares);
• 13 November, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Illicit Trafficking and Economic Management of Cultural Goods (Lorenzo Verderame, Davide Nadali);
• 20 November, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: case studies: Two archaeological collection from Central Africa / Archaeology in Israel and occupied territories (Nicolas Nikis, Laurent Tholbecq);
• 27 November, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: case studies: Archaeology in Turkey (Unesco site Arslantepe), Syria (Ebla) and Iraq (tell Zhurgul) - Francesca Balossi Restelli, Davide Nadali;
• 4 December, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Cultural heritage and colonial and postcolonian wiews (Fernando Escribano Martin, Marina Gallinaro);
• 11 December, 4:00 - 6:00 PM CET: Debating Present and Future Issues on endangered cultural heritage: open discussion with teaching staff and students on the questions raised in the course of the virtual component.

Students will be assessed on the basis of an oral presentation on a specific topic among the many related to the course, assigned to the participant at the end of the virtual component, and to be presented during the physical component (see the  programme above).

The assessment will be based on the following criteria:

• cooperation as a competence,
• ability to summarise ideas,
• understanding of nuances,
• being aware of political issues and risks, 
• adaptation to the work environment, and
• meeting deadlines.

Specific skills include: critical thinking, adaptability, collaborating, thinking outside the box and comparing, ability to express sensitivity in relation to personal identity, and use of digital tools.

Motivation Letter

CV

Applications will be evaluated based on the documents above.

Lucia Mori is Associate professor of History of the ancient Near East at Sapienza University in Rome. She is member of the PhD school in Pholology and history of the ancient world at sapienza University. She has collaborated to several archeological expeditions in Syria and Libya and she is currently in charge of the the research on the Hittite and post-Hittite phase at Arslantepe, Türkiye. She is currently coordinating a Prin PNRR project on "Planning the future of a Unesco site: setting a model for the protection of a World Heritage site as a node of multidisciplinary scientific research and laboratory for social integration, international cooperation, landscape preservation and cultural dissemination".

Carmen del Cerro Linares is a full professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). Her area of teaching is History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, which she teaches in different degrees and master's degrees, as well as in training courses at different institutions. Director of the Institute for Eastern and Egyptian Studies at the UAM, and of the research group Cultures, Technologies and Environment of the Societies of the Ancient Near East, UAM. She leads the UAM Archaeological and Archaeobiological Mission in al Madam (2015) and al Khudeirah (2020) and Kalba (2025) Sharjah (UAE) under the name of Spanish Archaeological and Archaeobiological Mission at Sharjah (SAAMS). She is director of the journal Isimu, a scientific journal for the Near East and Egypt in Antiquity since 2019. Carmen del Cerro was appointed as a Heritage Expert by the European Commission in 2022.

Ana Isabel Díaz-Plaza Varón is a museum professional and conservator at the Museo de Artes y Tradiciones Populares (Autonomous University of Madrid), where she has led key initiatives in collections, exhibitions, and heritage management since 2010. She is Secretary of UMAC (ICOM) for the 2025–2028 term, actively engaged in international networks and projects related to university museums and collections.

Francisco Borrego Gallardo is an associate professor of ancient history, specialising in Egypt, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has published book chapters and academic and dissemination articles on his areas of specialisation. Among other things, his interests focus on the study of ideology, royalty and religion in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, particularly in terms of their manifestations and their historical and ideological implications. He has worked on several campaigns for the Djehuty Project, one of the most important Spanish missions in Egypt.

Patrick Maxime Michel studied classical archaeology, ancient history and is specialised in Assyriology in Geneva and Rome as a member of the Swiss Institute; DAS in cultural property law (2021); several excavation campaigns in Syria with the American University of Beirut. He is also a member of the scientific committee of the ALIPH foundation. He is a Senior lecturer in ancient history and heads the Collart-Palmyra project at the University of Lausanne, dealing with the Baalshamîn sanctuary in Palmyra, now destroyed. He is also the director of the NUCLEUS faculty centre, a centre of expertise active in Digital Studies.

Laurent Tholbecq is Professor of Classical Archaeology (Roman Provinces) at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He has worked in the Near East since 1992 and headed the French archaeological mission in Petra (Jordan) since 2013. His expertise is in Hellenistic and Roman architecture in the Near East; he has a particular interest in Nabataean studies, Provincia Arabia, and Cultural Heritage Studies.

Francesca Balossi Restelli is Full Professor of Pre- and Protohistory of Western Asia at Sapienza University of Rome. A specialist in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia, she directs research at Arslantepe (UNESCO WH site), where she coordinates an international team. Her research focuses on food, pottery technology, and social complexity, as well as on management of archaeological sites, protection and conservation. A former Humboldt Fellow, she has excavated across Europe, Central America, and the Near East. She is associate editor of Origini and serves on several scientific boards. She has published over 100 scholarly works.

Lorenzo Verderame is an associate professor in Assyriology, he is the coordinator of the Oriental curriculum of the PhD school in Philology and History of the Ancient World and teaches Sumerian, Akkadian and Eblaite languages, Mesopotamian Literatures and Introduction to Mesopotamian Cultures. He is the author of a dozen monographs and over a hundred articles on the administrative documents of 3rd millennium Mesopotamia, material culture and various aspects of religion and literature as well as the history of studies. He is also the epigrapher for the Italian archaeological mission at Nina/Niĝin (Tell Surghul, Iraq) and at Ebla (Tell Mardikh, Syria

Davide Nadali is an Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Sapienza University of Rome. He serves as the director of the Italian archaeological excavation at Tell Zurghul/Nigin in Iraq. In 2019, he was appointed Vice-Director of the Ebla Expedition and Principal Investigator of the Ebla Project for the study and publication of Ebla materials and excavation reports. Since 2020, he has been the director of the Italian section of the joint Syro-Italian archaeological expedition at Tell Ferzat in Damascus, Syria. His primary interests include the art, architecture, and urbanism of ancient Assyria; the emergence of urbanism in Syria and Mesopotamia; ancient warfare; and landscape archaeology, with a particular focus on ancient waterscapes.

Nicolas Nikis is an archaeologist, specialist of central Africa. He holds a PhD in History, Art History and Archaeology (Université libre de Bruxelles Belgium, 2018) with a thesis entitled “Archeology of ancient copper metallurgy in the Niari basin, Republic of the Congo”. He held various positions, including at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge (2019-2021). Since 2021 he works at ULB (CReA-Patrimoine; Centre d'Anthropologie culturelle) and at the Royal Museum of Central Africa as a FED-tWIN researcher. He coordinates or participates in several research and academic training projects in Central Africa.

Marina Gallinaro is an Associate Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she teaches Endangered Archaeology Management, Prehistory of Art, and African Prehistory. Her research centers on the relationship between humans and the environment in drylands - with a focus on the emergence and practice of pastoralism in Africa, including symbolic and rock art studies -, as well as on cultural heritage management and sustainable development projects -focusing on cultural landscapes and African rock art sites. A former fellow at UCLA and ICCROM, she has excavated in northern (Libya and Egypt) and eastern Africa (Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Kenia) and Oman. She directs research in the Borana zone (southern Ethiopia), in the Singida region (Tanzania) and in Italy (Ranaldi Rock Shelter).

Fernando Escribano Martín is associate professor of Ancient Near Eastern history at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and is also specialised in the study of the origins of this part of history. He has worked on issues of heritage and transfer, and is very interested in how and when the legacy of Mesopotamian culture has been produced in Classical and Muslim history. Sharing these holistic views, with researchers and students, is the cause and motive of this research, and is part of what will be worked on in this course.