Past worlds, present questions, possible futures

About Global Heritage Lab

The Global Heritage Lab is a research hub and laboratory for critical reflections on museums and heritage. The aim is to rethink heritage from global and historical perspectives and to provide impetus for reshaping museums and university collections. The Global Heritage Lab promotes the development of innovative approaches to dealing with colonial pasts and supports collaborative forms of research and teaching. The focus is on historically suppressed forms of knowledge. What human-environment relationships exist beyond European notions of nature and culture? How are contact and conflict histories negotiated globally? How do historically grown ideas of the Self and the Other shape our coexistence today? And how can we create a common future in times of ecological and social crises? As an institution of the Transdisciplinary Research Area Present Pasts, the Global Heritage Lab looks at the interrelationships between current challenges and comparable phenomena in the past.

This transdisciplinary laboratory is hosted by the TRA Present Pasts.