Growing the Leiden Heritage community: Archaeology hosts 2nd Heritage Open Mic
Are you an interdisciplinary researcher working on or with heritage? Do you struggle with faculty fragmentation and finding relevant colleagues to collaborate with? How can we at Leiden facilitate interfaculty knowledge exchange? These were some of the questions which inspired eight Leiden University scholars to pitch their research at the Leiden Archaeology Faculty on Wednesday May 21st.
Following a first edition of the Heritage Open Mic in February this year, the second edition provided another opportunity to Leiden researchers to share how their research, explicitly or implicitly, relates to heritage. As part of the KIEM Grant - 'Networking Heritage at Leiden University’, these Open Mics aim to map, incentivise and grow the development of a heritage-oriented network at Leiden University.
The event brought together Leiden researchers from many different faculties, who voiced among others identified the challenges they face in doing heritage research within what are given their research questions almost inevitably interdisciplinary fields. Researchers currently have difficulties identifying other colleagues at Leiden University (particularly from other faculties) working on similar themes but who do not necessarily self-identify as a ‘heritage’ scholar. This had attendees conclude that we must embrace the broadness and diversity of interpretations of what constitutes heritage, and that we should explore why people believe something should or should not be considered heritage. The participants also clearly voiced that academics working on Law, Environmental Science or Data Science have an urgent need for network that allows them to identify and connect to scholars with expertise on heritage and vice-versa.
Another Open Mic dedicated to Heritage is scheduled for early Fall. Please join us if you are a researcher working in one capacity or another on or with heritage, and want to connect to our growing Leiden heritage community! To stay up to date with heritage related events at Leiden, please join our LinkedIn group. The Linkedin group also creates connections from Leiden to our colleagues at UNA Europa, as well as globally.
