Heritage Evidence, Foresight and Policy MSc

Equipping policy professionals and heritage practitioners to think critically and strategically about the long-term futures of what society values.

About the programme

To build a more sustainable and equitable world, we need to imagine better futures. 

The fields of foresight and futures studies use evidence about the world today to create scenarios of possible futures. Heritage can make these possible futures richer and more meaningful, drawing on our collective memories, and tapping into the values that shape what we care about. For those working in public policy, and in social innovation, these approaches can help to think about the long-term future of what matters to society.

Why heritage and the future?

Heritage reflects our past, but it also addresses the future. It sustains the places, practices and artefacts that we find meaningful, in order for future generations to have access to what we value today. In times of change and uncertainty, heritage can be a source of continuity, identity, and cohesion.

For heritage to play this role, the future can't be taken for granted. Threats to heritage, from society and from nature, need to be identified and mitigated. New forms of heritage, emerging from new materials and ways of living, must be recognised and protected. And the role that heritage plays in our lives is always changing. With foresight, these challenges can be anticipated, and we can adapt to them.

So heritage can benefit from foresight. But foresight can be made stronger and richer through heritage. Heritage connects people across time, and makes our responsibility to future generations clear. Heritage practitioners and researchers understand loss and decay, whether through the respectful deaccessioning of items in collections or through studying the molecular processes unfolding within artefacts. And it starts with a focus on people and what matters to them, since what we recognise as heritage reflects what we find meaningful.

How heritage and foresight can help policy

These perspectives are valuable now. Policy teams and groups trying to make a difference in society are grappling with a complex world in which decisions are never value-free. 

Over recent years, a new approach has emerged to designing social interventions, one that thinks in terms of systems and networks, that recognises the importance of community expertise and values, that recognises the limits of market approaches to describing what is important to people, and that aims to develop systems that are sustainable over the long-term. Groups working in this way draw on evidence from across multiple disciplines within material science and social research. 

This approach supports an emerging form of governance and public policy, one that prioritises resilience and sustainability, that is adaptable, and that is grounded in the values of the communities it serves. This is necessary for thinking about the long-term-future of what matters to society

This programme will equip graduates to support this work, through helping organisations and institutions identify what we value now, and imagine new forms it might take, so that we might protect it where we can, adapt it where have to, or decommission it when it is no longer something we can take forwards with us.

The Heritage Evidence, Foresight and Policy MSc equipped students to combine a deep understanding of what mattered to society with the capacity to manage uncertainty and anticipate change. Students gained a unique skillset that equipped them to support long-term decision-making in heritage, social, and cultural policy contexts. The Masters programme drew on a wide interdisciplinary range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including strategic foresight and related disciplines such as sociology, geography, and design, each of which had its own academic traditions of engaging with the future.

The students:

• Gained an understanding of how heritage recognised and protected what was meaningful and valued,
• Learned practical foresight techniques such as scenario planning and horizon scanning,
• Developed critical perspectives on different approaches to the future,
• Encountered key concepts from systems analysis and complexity theory, and
• Grasped the most effective ways to embed evidence from foresight and futures analysis in day-to-day policy contexts.

Along the way, they built a practical understanding of core qualitative and quantitative research methods and became skilled in working with evidence from multiple disciplines and paradigms.

Modules and structure

Heritage Evidence Foresight and Policy MSc is organised in five strands to give you a holistic perspective of heritage and the future, that draws on multiple disciplinary perspectices. Students learnings  culminated undertaking their own original piece of research in the diisertation module.

1. Core heritage concepts

Introduction to sustainable heritage

This introductory module, shared across all of the Master’s programmes in the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage, offers students the chance to engage with the fundamental concepts and principles that underpin sustainable heritage. 

Students learn:

• what is and what is not heritage
• how and in what ways heritage is valued
• the shape and nature of the heritage sector
• the role played by heritage in developing resilient and sustainable societies
• heritage risks and possible futures
• how scientific data and evidence is used within heritage  

The module illustrates the social and material systems hat form heritage, and developing a understanding of different research paradigms and methodologies, equipping students to collaborate in a truly interdisciplinary way.

2. Theorising and working with the future

Foresight for heritage I

This module gave practical experience of strategic foresight tools, introducing core concepts of trends and drivers, and covering a range of techniques for creating and analysing future scenarios. Students create their own scenarios reflecting possible futures for a heritage area relevant to their professional concerns.

Foresight for heritage II

This module introduced students to critical futures approaches that aim to find a place for social value and normative responses to future challenges, equipping them to critique the scenarios produced in the previous module. 

Time, systems and future heritage

This module introduced students to different theoretical perspectives, engaging with theories of causation and emergence, understanding the social impact of ideas of the future, and examining discourses of the future throughout history. Together these offer the theoretical and methodological resources students need to critically engage with the methods of strategic foresight currently employed in organisations around the world, and to begin to connect these with ideas of the long-term found in heritage. 

Design futures for heritage

This module introduced students to techniques from design futures and speculative design, and considering the role of design in creating new heritage. Students created physical or digital artefacts from possible futures, and exhibit them as a group. 

Careers and employability

This degree was designed to give graduates a diverse skill-set usually associated with senior or leadership roles, encompassing research skills, competence in strategic foresight, the ability to envision and work towards strategic outcomes, and an understanding of the value of different forms of evidence to policy teams. These attributes, coupled with the capacity to recognise social value and make the case for its protection, will make graduates attractive to a wide range of employers. 

Within the heritage sector, both policy teams and academics recognise that there is a need for heritage professionals and practitioners with the capacity to anticipate and manage long-term change. For groups in social and cultural policy more widely, the ability to think strategically about complex issues is established as a highly desirable skill. 

“This is a time of unprecedented challenge for our historic environment. More than ever before, heritage professionals need to be able to think strategically about the long-term future of the historic places and artefacts that we choose to protect. Developed through the Academic-Heritage Partnership between Historic England and the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage, this innovative master's programme will provide the foresight skills we need to anticipate change and ensure our heritage is accessible to future generations. Graduates from this programme will make a vital contribution to the sector."

Duncan Wilson OBE, Chief Executive, Historic England 

“Heritage has always been concerned with the future, protecting our historic environment and the culture we care about for the people who come after us. This exciting new Masters programme shows how heritage values of care and stewardship can be combined with strategic foresight to think about the long-term future of what matters to us all. At a time when policy groups are faced with complex and difficult challenges that affect people across all parts of society, the skills and perspectives developed through this programme will equip graduates to make a real difference." 

Barney Sloane, National Specialist Services Director, Historic England