Heritage policy

Anticipation and foresight

This research area is focused on understanding the perspectives on the future that are held by those working within heritage, and developing their capacity to reflexively consider the ideas of the future informing their work.

Our research

The Future Heritage research strand contributes to addressing these challenges through three broad areas of work:

Future contexts for present and emerging heritage
In what sort of new circumstances will future heritage be situated? Using models and data from heritage science and engineering alongside other natural and social sciences, and drawing on the experience of strategic foresight and futures practitioners, the research will explore how best to make robust and generative claims about the possible futures in which heritage will exist. 

Future forms of heritage
As new materials and technologies emerge, as new patterns of consumption and production develop, and as new senses of what is valued gain currency within society, the nature of heritage will evolve. The research will identify speculative and prefigurative work across the arts and sciences exploring what (for example) synthetic biology or artificial intelligence offer artists and designers, and engage with the new forms of practice and artefact that will result. It will track—and foster—innovations in cities, in building materials, in digital preservation, in artistic expression, to imagine new possibilities for heritage beyond current framings.

Future roles for heritage in society
What different roles might heritage play in future society? What can society expect of heritage? How can the capability of heritage to support responses to challenges of resilience and sustainability be developed? In addressing this question, research within the Future Heritage strand will pay attention to the need for heritage policy and leadership to develop a critical and informed view of the future, working with the multiple forms of evidence needed to anticipate change, and understanding how these forms of evidence can best contribute to decision-making.

New policy networks

This research area aims to describe, understand and support the new networks of advice and expertise that are forming in response to the environmental and technological challenges facing the heritage sector.

Our research

• Connecting heritage policy with new sources of foresight and strategic thinking
• Enabling inter-disciplinary conversation and knowledge exchange between academia, civil society and policy groups
• Building the capacity to recognise, anticipate and work with change and uncertainty in heritage management

Environmental standards

This research area focuses on the dynamic development of standards and guidelines that remain hotly debated today among practitioners in museums, galleries, libraries and archives.  Fuelled by the zero carbon debates surrounding climate change, discussions on environmental standards have morphed into green conservation initiatives which we join through our evidence-based research.

Algorithmic heritage

This research area focuses on the role of heritage in understanding the place of algorithmic systems in society, recognising that making sense of this future industrial heritage will require new forms of interpretation and presentation.

Our research

Artificial intelligence will form the industrial heritage of the future. The algorithmic systems that comprise AI are becoming a central part of our economy, the equivalent of the mills of the first industrial revolution, and just as much part of our national heritage. Understanding these systems' part in shaping the present will help future generations better understand their world. Yet there is currently little discussion, in the UK or globally, of how these systems might be recognised as future heritage, or how, in practice, such a heritage would be managed. 

But thinking of AI systems as future heritage offers a new way of thinking about their governance. It emphasises our stewardship of them, highlighting the responsibility of their creators for their actions and effects. It draws attention to the persistence of these systems over time, raising questions about their maintenance, about the ways they might be retired from service, and about their legacies. Perhaps most usefully, thinking of algorithmic systems as future heritage might help us see that AI is not something to fear but a human achievement to celebrate, and that taking the steps necessary to make it accessible to future generations will ensure that future generations also recognise this value. And in exploring the many technological and conceptual challenges presented by algorithmic heritage, our understanding of what constitutes heritage and how we care for new forms of heritage will be enlarged.

So there are compelling reasons to develop the technical and policy frameworks that will allow us to recognise and care for algorithmic heritage. Working with heritage policy groups, the Algorithmic Heritage research area is working towards this goal by:

• Drawing on relevant research in computer science, science and technology studies, heritage studies and other relevant disciplines to describe and theorise algorithmic heritage,
• Undertaking ethnographic research with users and developers of algorithmic systems to understand what this approach might mean in practice for firms and organisations making use of them in their work,
• Working with policy and technology experts to understand how these lessons from the field might be translated into practical approaches for managing this future heritage

Collection lifetime and heritage capital

This research area focuses on the prediction of the lifetimes of cultural heritage, and its implications for management and policy. It involves the development of damage functions, and their use in decision-making and valuation.

Our research

The project ITHACA (Integrating Lifetimes in Heritage Capital), 2023-2026, funded by AHRC and led by Josep Grau-Bove, has the objective of transforming heritage capital by incorporating notions of damage and change. To do so, the project is expanding the number of damage functions available and exploring how the perception of damage is related to the willingess to pay. It is a collaborative project between economists, heritage experts and heritage scientists.

In collaboration with IPSOS and DCMS, ISH is studying the potential of damage functions to evaluate interventions that improve the environmental conditions of museums. The objective of the project is to determine the economic benefit of interventions that increase the lifetime of collections. Within this 3-year project, new methods to integrate damage predictions within economic valuation will be proposed, and then tested with real data from a selection of museums that have recently seen investment in preventive conservation methods. 

May Cassar
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Richard Sandford
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Kalliopi Fouseki
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