Heritage in Transformation (InHerit)

The K?te Hamburger Kolleg “Heritage in Transformation” (inherit) is to be developed as a leading national and international Centre for Advanced Study in the field of Heritage. Heritage is central to key issues of our time, such as identity and difference, belonging and ownership, and the changing relationship between past, present and future, driven by multiple social, technological and environmental factors. Together with international fellows, heritage will be analyzed as a pluralizing, ongoing activity; heritage’s influence on changing social relations will be a key focus of examination; and the transformation and expansion of heritage itself, through innovative knowledge exchange formats, will be actively pursued. The resulting new form of heritage research positions the humanities at the centre of addressing two fundamental global transformation processes, leading to the reshaping of the humanities’ own epistemological frames of reference. InHerit’s core research themes are based on these paradigm shifts: (1) the decentring of the West or Global North; (2) the decentring of the human, and accompanying focus on connections to, and interdependencies with, nature; and (3) the transformation of attributions of value, especially in relation to changes in reflections on the parameters of collecting. InHerit’s emphatically transdisciplinary, practice-oriented approach, in which the humanities are central, tackles urgent social, cultural, political and environmental challenges, and, thus, directly addresses the key idea of the BMBF programme “Understanding Society – Shaping the Future.”