Student Focus: Dr Eirini Gallou

My research focused on the challenges and possibilities lying in peripheral island heritage sites to achieve sustainable management and in parallel contribute to local community development by engaging communities more effectively in management processes.

In a world facing strong resource pressures (human, financial, material) peripheral heritage sites and isolated island communities are facing particular challenges to be sustainable. By considering heritage institutions, their communities of professionals and local community groups an interdependent actors of a social system, the the research developed and utilized a theoretical framework based on social capital-as key indicator of social wellbeing- to analyse outcomes and impacts of participation from both institutional and community perspectives. Following  an inductive approach, types of proceed social impacts were mapped and categorized under the conceptual framework developed. The research wider aim is to improve the evaluation process for participatory projects in heritage, specifically focusing on social impacts and their measurement.

The study followed a case study approach, looking at participatory projects realized in the remote and island context of Orkney, Scotland under a Landscape partnership scheme, that included projects form archaeological conservation to oral history archive creation. The multiplicity of modalities of participations studied allowed defining the effect of the management approaches adopted on achieved social outcomes. It also led to the development of recommendation for more sustainable, people-centered approaches to heritage management and planning at local level, indicating pathways to community empowerment through the process of engaging with heritage.