From the climate crisis and resource scarcity to the resurgence of authoritarian forces and societal polarization, we are living in an era of intersecting crises. The cultural sphere is no exception: UNESCO’s framework of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has become a key battleground, increasingly targeted and appropriated by anti-democratic groups as an ideological tool. At the same time, liberal and progressive actors—from cultural institutions to policymakers—invest the concept with sweeping expectations, framing living heritage as an all-purpose resource for ecological sustainability, community resilience, and democratic diversification. Caught in this crossfire, local traditions face growing moral and bureaucratic pressure to conform to shifting normative standards, ranging from animal welfare and gender equity to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The result is a proliferation of competing „Authorized Heritage Discourses“ driven by conflicting agendas. Heritage is no longer merely an expanding regime, but a concept under acute stress: heritage is strained.
This raises critical questions: How can communities, institutions, and scholars committed to democratic values protect living traditions from reactionary co-optation without suffocating them under excessive socio-political demands and neoliberal bureaucracy?
At the same time, grounded empirical research on the actors themselves highlights their situated complexity and heterogeneous lifeworlds—turning ICH into a critical lens to question totalizing "polycrisis" diagnoses that tend to obscure more than they explain.
This online lecture series offers an international forum to trace how intangible heritage is contested and negotiated between multi-level governance and everyday practice—and to rethink the future of an increasingly strained concept.
Program & Schedule:
05.11.26 Prof. Dr. Manuel Trummer (Munich) | Prof. Dr. Barbara Wittmann (Bamberg) | Prof. Dr. Sophie Elpers
16-18 h (Antwerp/Amsterdam)
Intangible Cultural Heritage under Stress. Introduction
12.11.26 Prof. Dr. Valdimar Hafstein (Reykjavik)
16-18 h Can Heritage Feed Us? Icelandic Skyr, Food Security and the Uses of Intangible Heritage
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Manuel Trummer (Munich)
26.11.26 Prof. Dr. Gertraud Koch (Hamburg)
16-18 h Cultural Heritage as a Resource and as Care for Sustainable Development – Problems and Perspectives of a Cultural Policy Mantra
Discussant: PD Dr. Sarah May (Freiburg)
10.12.26 Prof. Dr. Marc Jacobs (Antwerp/Brussels)
16-18 h Ignoring, Flying Splits or Rolling Consent. Six of one and half a dozen of the other?
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Sophie Elpers (Antwerp/Amsterdam)
14.01.27 Prof. Dr. Fabio Mugnaini (Siena)
18-20 h Too real to fit in. The Palio di Siena and the UNESCO ICH inventory policies
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Barbara Wittmann (Bamberg)
21.01.27 Prof. Dr. Chiara Bortolotto (Paris)
16-18 h Polycrisis as an Opportunity for Intangible Cultural Heritage: An Optimistic Perspective
Discussant: Prof. Dr. Mirko Uhlig (Potsdam)
04.02.27 Concluding Discussion with statements by: PD Dr. Sarah May (Freiburg) | Prof. Dr. Markus Tauschek (Freiburg)
16-18 h | Prof. Dr. Mirko Uhlig (Potsdam)
All times CET.
ZOOM: https://lmu-munich.zoom-x.de/j/68874293423?pwd=XEBKXYPKVxUMdBSl2WhW97cUh8ICJd.1
Detailed program can be found here. (PDF, 3.801 KB)
We very much look forward to welcoming you to the discussions.
Co-organized by:
Prof. Dr. Manuel Trummer
European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis
Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Prof. Dr. Sophie Elpers
Intangible Heritage and Ethnology
University of Antwerp / Meertens Institute Amsterdam
PD Dr. Sarah May
Cultural Analysis/European Ethnology
University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Markus Tauschek
Cultural Analysis/European Ethnology
University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Mirko Uhlig
Cultural and Social Transformation
University of Applied Sciences Potsdam
Prof. Dr. Barbara Wittmann
European Ethnology with Focus on Intangible Cultural Heritage
University of Bamberg