The project is entitled "Sustainable Cultural Heritage Management for Social Inclusion and Economic Growth" (SHMGrow). The project has been selected in the recent DANIDA Partnership Project call, which aimed to strengthen long-term collaborations between Danish and African universities. The call was open to all subject areas and all Danish universities, and only five out of 20 applications received funding.

The start-up funding will be used to develop a full-scale partnership project, which is scheduled to be submitted to DANIDA in October this year. The project has the support of the participating universities at rector level as well as director-level support from the National Heritage Council of South Africa, and has also attracted interest from the Danish Embassy in South Africa.

A partnership across three countries

SHMGrow is a partnership between Aarhus University, the University of Pretoria, the University of the Western Cape and the American University in Cairo. Together, the partners will develop new solutions to global challenges in sustainable cultural heritage management.

Denmark, South Africa, and Egypt all have strong and vibrant cultural heritage sectors, with many cultural and world heritage sites. At the same time, research unequivocally indicates that both cultural and natural heritage sites today are under unprecedented pressure – as a result of climate change, loss of biodiversity, conflicts and increasing social and economic inequality.

Training, capacity building and joint learning

The project will meet these challenges by pooling knowledge and experience across continents and developing new educational pathways within Heritage Studies. Specifically, SHMGrow will work with joint courses, hybrid learning methods, capacity building, staff exchanges and co-development of curricula. The project will also offer scholarships to African students who are going to study at Aarhus University.

The goal is to educate the next generation of cultural heritage managers and researchers in Denmark, South Africa and Egypt in close dialogue with each other.

"Our basic idea is that learning goes both ways. We have a lot to learn from each other – both through our similarities and our differences,” says Nick Shepherd.

A project in line with Denmark's Africa Plan

The project idea arose through academic disc4ussions between researchers at Aarhus University and the partner universities in Africa. An existing academic affiliation with the University of Pretoria has helped create the foundation for the collaboration.

SHMGrow is in line with Denmark's new Africa Plan and contributes to strengthening the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies as an inclusive and unifying field of research and education, where countries with very different social, political and economic conditions can find common solutions to global challenges.

Contact

Nick Shepherd, Associate Professor
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Mail: ns@cas.au.dk
Tel. + 45 8715 1402