The conservation and management of cultural heritage unifies various academic disciplines, such as Building History, Conservation, Urban Planning, Natural Sciences, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Cultural Management, and Tourism. Many of these employ their field-specific approach to research and its implementation. Although each of these disciplines play a significant role in heritage preservation, there is a lack of awareness for the methods of neighbouring disciplines.

What, however, many of these academic fields employ is mapping. It is a tool to document, organise, analyse and assess data. Some of these maps are merely a method to process information, in other cases maps constitute the basis for further work of neighbouring disciplines. It can be a very basic working method, which has not changed (much) over the course of time. In the case of the discipline of history, mapping has been “re-discovered”, where mapping offers unique possibilities and insights to unveil spatial relationships. Most importantly, perhaps, is the fact how maps have been designed for political purposes: choice of information, or the setting of specific standards.

Participants of different field are asked to present challenges and ideally also solutions they have encountered when employing maps on or off site, of tangible or intangible heritage, and ideally also their solutions. To foster inter- and transdisciplinary work and research the conference is conceived to not only raise awareness but to also inspire researchers to develop innovative approaches in mapping like in Visual Arts. In addition, mapping should be understood as a tool for creating narratives, to engage stakeholders and tourists to enjoy and participate in the conservation and management of heritage.

The conference will offer a platform for the different disciplines, each of them dealing with mapping which acts as common denominator. The conference participants are invited to present their research where mapping played if not a central, but at least a considerable role to help discover unusual phenomena that necessitated interdisciplinary work, perhaps even by discovering promising interfaces between the various disciplines. Foremost the kind of research and projects will be welcome where maps could and can provoke a change of perspective and enable dialogue in dealing with cultural heritage.

The abstract should be 300 words, and should be sent to: cultural-heritage-centre(at)b-tu.de
Deadline: 01.10.2018.

This conference will be the 6th international conference of the Joint Master Programme Heritage Conservation and Site Management of BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg and the Helwan University in Kairo.