Lunchtime Conversation with the World Monuments Fund

Join architect Stephen Battle, Senior Regional Director for Africa at the World Monuments Fund (WMF), and Magnus von Wistinghausen, Executive Director of World Monuments Fund Britain (WMF Britain), for a lunchtime conversation on Wednesday 11 June.

Stephen will share insights from over 30 years of conservation work across Africa, highlighting how WMF collaborates with local communities to protect and promote endangered built and cultural heritage. Magnus will reflect on the Fund’s broader mission and work in the UK and internationally.

This event is ideal for anyone interested in architectural conservation, heritage practice, policy, management or community engagement.

This event is open to all staff and students across The Bartlett and is being hosted by the Architecture and Historic Urban Environments MA cluster in collaboration with Situated Practice MA, Space Syntax: Architecture and Cities MSc/MRes and Architectural History MA.

Speakers

Stephen Battle is an architect with 30 years' professional experience managing conservation projects in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He started on his professional path in Zanzibar, where he worked on projects in the historic Stone Town. From 1998 to 2008, he worked for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture based in Geneva, where he was project manager for conservation and urban rehabilitation projects in Syria, Tanzania and Pakistan. He joined World Monuments Fund in 2009 as Program Director, responsible for managing WMF’s projects in Africa. He has led major multi-year conservation projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Mali, Ghana, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, the Maldives and Uganda.

Magnus von Wistinghausen joined as Executive Director of WMF Britain in May 2023. An economist with career foundations in investment banking, Magnus has worked in the arts and heritage sector in Britain and internationally for the past 25 years, as consultant, adviser, senior executive and trustee – including as a long-standing Senior Associate with AEA Consulting and lately Vice Principal of City & Guilds of London Art School.

Image: Credited to WMF – La Maison du Peuple (the House of the People), Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.