Sustainable Heritage Management

专业介绍

The Master’s Degree programme in Sustainable Heritage Management equips you with the knowledge and skills needed to address the challenges associated with managing cultural heritage. Working with cultural and natural heritage means taking responsibility for humanity’s connections to the past. At the same time, you will learn to understand heritage as an integral part of the present and as a valuable resource for the future. 

Managing heritage is no simple task. It involves not only preserving and protecting sites, objects, and traditions, but also navigating the many interests, demands, and expectations attached to them. 

Through a combination of theory and practice, you will explore the exciting, rapidly expanding, and increasingly complex field of heritage management. You will become part of a unique interdisciplinary environment where you develop the skills to assess, safeguard, and preserve heritage while also learning how to shape, challenge, and renew the field. 

Heritage as a resource 

Cultural and natural heritage play a vital role in collective memory, sustainability, and personal identity formation by connecting people across time and place. As a result, heritage has become an important existential factor. It can also serve as a powerful economic, environmental, and political resource that may be used for a variety of purposes. 

At the same time, heritage management can be challenging and, in some cases, may place burdens on local communities or influence them in unintended ways. Throughout the programme, you will learn to analyse and critically reflect on the ethical dimensions of heritage work. 

In addition to a strong theoretical foundation, you will gain practical competencies and professional know-how that prepare you to address future heritage challenges at both local and global levels. 

You will explore questions such as: 

• What constitutes cultural and natural heritage, and what does not? 

• How do we document, prioritise, and safeguard heritage for future generations? 

• How can civil society engage responsibly in heritage management? 

• How should competing claims of ownership and rights be addressed? 

• How can we co-create and communicate heritage in sustainable ways that generate lasting value for cultural institutions, creative industries, communities, and individuals? 

A strong interdisciplinary field 

The programme brings together methods and perspectives from a wide range of disciplines. As a student, you will join a vibrant research environment that includes scholars from archaeology, anthropology, intellectual history, aesthetics, history, museum studies, cultural studies, evolutionary studies, and digital design. 

As a result, you will work not only with tangible forms of heritage but also with textual data and the ways individuals and communities engage with and use heritage. 

Your daily study environment will be based at Moesgaard Museum, just south of Aarhus, providing a unique combination of university and museum settings and offering exceptional opportunities for collaboration and hands-on learning. 

Heritage in practice 

The programme provides you with the academic knowledge and practical skills required to work with cultural and natural heritage in professional settings. 

Graduates find opportunities in museums, heritage and planning institutions, municipalities, international organisations, private companies, and non-profit organisations. 

The programme prepares you for a wide range of career paths within the heritage sector. During your second year, you can choose to specialise in a particular area of interest, or apply and further develop your knowledge and skills through a project-based placement. 

You may also choose to pursue a research career by continuing with a PhD.