I will not be able to attend, but there is an event in the United Kingdom on June 9, 2017 in Canterbury well worth attending for anyone interested. Entitled “Cultural Heritage in Danger: Illicit Trafficking, Armed Conflicts and Cultural Diplomacy,” the conference organizers describe it as follows. Registration is available here.
After World War II, the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in Event of Armed Conflict recognized the need to protect and preserve heritage for the benefit of mankind. In the last 60 years, this Convention has been ratified by 129 countries, the latest being the UK in February 2017, and has improved the international framework regulating the protection of cultural heritage in time of conflict. This conference will bring together senior government officials and leading academics from the UK and continental Europe to assess improvements and weaknesses of heritage protection in the current era of terrorist warfare, where ideology, social media and clickbait concur to destroy heritage as recently seen in Palmyra and Mosul. It will also assess developments in the fight against the trafficking of cultural property and discuss new ways of enhancing cooperation between states, as well as Europe and Great Britain in the uncertain time of Brexit. Finally, speakers will discuss how cultural diplomacy can facilitate dialogue between communities that have been torn apart by conflict.
Program
9:00am–9.15am Registration
9.15am–10.45am Session 1: Trafficking of Cultural Property
Chairing Session: Dr Sophia Labadi, Senior Lecturer, School of European Culture and Languages
Speakers:
– Janet Ulph, Professor, University of Leicester
Title: Due diligence in the context of the illicit trade.
– Kathryn Walker Tubb, Professor, Institute of Archaeology, UCL
Title: to be confirmed
– David Gill, Professor, Archaeological Heritage and Director of Heritage Futures at the University of Suffolk
Title: Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property
10.45am–11.00am Coffee
11.00am–12.00pm Keynote Speech: Time of Conflict
Chairing Session: Karl Goodwin, Vice Chancellor GTA CLAS and PhD Candidate
Artemis Papathanassiou, Former Chair of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict,
Senior Legal Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece.
Title: Protecting cultural property in the event of armed conflict: a targeted overview.
12.00pm-1.00pm Lunch
1.00pm–2.30pm Session 2: Law Enforcement and Criminal Regulation
Chairing Session: Dr Tatiana Flessas, Associate Professor of Law, Department of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Speakers:
– Mark Harrison FSA, National Policing & Crime Advisor, Historic England
Title: Policing the Past-Understanding crime threats within the historic environment.
– Sophie Hayes, Detective Constable, London Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit. Title: The antiquities market: Challenges and opportunities for law enforcement.
– Dr Sophie Vigneron, Senior Lecturer, Kent Law School, University of Kent
Title: New Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property, Council of Europe.
2.30pm-2.45pm Coffee
2.45pm – 4:15pm Session 3: Cultural Diplomacy
Chairing Session: Maria Dimitriou, Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate
Speakers:
– Dr. Carla Figueira, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, University of Goldsmiths
Title: To be confirmed
– Kristin Hausler, Dorset Senior Research Fellow in Public International Law, British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL)
Title: Cultural Heritage in Danger: The EU’s Diplomatic Response
Tasoula Hadjitofi, f. Honorary Consul of Cyprus in The Netherlands
Title: Walk of Truth
