The Ironbridge International Institute of Cultural Heritage held its international conference, Tourism and the Shifting Values of Cultural Heritage: Visiting Pasts, Developing Futures, in Taipei earlier this month.
The conference, held in association with the National Taiwan University and hosted at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, welcomed over 200 delegates from some 60 countries.
This conference sought to explore the complex and challenging relationships which exist between the many forms and formats of tangible and intangible heritage and tourism/tourists. The aim of this wide-reaching event was to encourage those researchers and professionals working at the interface between heritage and tourism from all nations and cultures to reflect upon these relationships. The conference was also a forum for the coming together of different disciplines and methodologies and we welcomed a friendly and creative exchange of diverse ideas and approaches.
Keynote speeches were delivered by Professor Maria Gravari-Barbas (the Director of the Institute for Research and High Studies on Tourism, Paris 1 – Sorbonne University), Professor Nelson Graburn (University of California Berkeley), and Marilyn Truscott (President of the ICOMOS International Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage).
A variety of themes were discussed during the sessions, exploring the complex and challenging relationships which exist between the many forms and formats of tangible and intangible heritage and tourism/tourists. The abstracts are available online and the full conference proceedings will be available shortly.
Various publications from the conference will emerge over the coming months. For further details please visit the conference website.