University of Ljubljana Summer School on Sustainable Heritage 2024

Cultural Heritage and Cultural Heritage Tourism – Constraints and Synergies

Between 1 and 7 July 2024, the Interdisciplinary Institute of the University of Ljubljana for Sustainable Protection of Heritage (ITD UL) is organising the 4th University of Ljubljana’s Sustainable Heritage Summer School, titled Cultural Heritage and Cultural Heritage Tourism – Constraints and Synergies in cooperation with ICOMOS Slovenia, ICOMOS Austria, ICOMOS Germany, ICOMOS Hungary, ICOMOS Switzerland, and the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee for Cultural Tourism. This will be the first time that our Summer School is organised in the framework of the ICOMOS Europe University Forum.

The Summer School will focus on the challenges of heritage conservation and management in the circumstances of increasingly intensive tourist use of cultural heritage sites and destinations. First and foremost, we will explore the heritage of castles and other complex historical heritage sites. We will also present the latest international document of the ICOMOS organisation, the ICOMOS International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism: reinforcing cultural heritage protection and community resilience through responsible and sustainable tourism management, which was drawn up in 2022 to prevent the degradation of cultural heritage due to touristification and highlight the importance of tourism-related social, ethical, cultural, environmental, and economic rights issues.

We will analyse the conditions for successful cooperation between all the stakeholders involved and explore their roles through concrete examples of successful practices. We will familiarise ourselves with examples of good heritage management related to tourism as well as with the challenges faced by the managers. During the excursions, we will examine several examples of the integration between heritage and tourism in Slovenia and Austria, where we will explore the heritage of the Wachau Valley cultural landscape, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the Traisental cultural landscape with its historic castles, farms, village wine cellars, and an abandoned mining town; as well as the UNESCO heritage site of the Schönbrunn Palace and gardens – one of the world’s busiest tourist sites. We will conclude the Summer School with a visit to the Toourism exhibition at the Austrian Architecture Museum in Vienna.

We will seek answers to the following questions:

WHAT ARE THE CRUCIAL CHALLENGES OF CULTURAL HERITAGE TOURISM?

HOW TO TACKLE CHALLENGES IN AN INCLUSIVE WAY?

HOW TO ENSURE A BETTER COLLABORATION FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE HERITAGE AND THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES?

Because we need to strive to develop and manage cultural tourism in a way that contributes to the preservation of cultural heritage, as it is vital to empower communities, achieve greater social resilience, and ensure everyone’s well-being and a healthy environment for all.

These principles, summed up from the ICOMOS International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism 2022, must be central to heritage planning and management in order to contribute to a just future for everyone. It is therefore important to thoroughly familiarise ourselves with them.

The Summer School is intended for Master’s and doctoral students as well as for all professionals who deal with the subject under consideration in practice: experts in the field of heritage protection, tourism, architecture, urban planning, and various heritage disciplines, representatives of local communities, and decision-makers at all levels in Slovenia and abroad.

The Summer School will be held live, first in Slovenia and then in Austria. For the first three days, the entire programme except the excursions will also take place in a hybrid format using the Zoom online platform.

The participants who register for online participation will receive a link three days before the beginning of the Summer School. Some of the introductory lectures will also be streamed live on the YouTube channel.

Active participation is foreseen for all participants. Anyone who would like to present the challenges related to their environments in the framework of thematic workshops is cordially invited. The presentations should be between 5 and 7 minutes long.

Please send your five-page presentation proposals in the ppt or pdf format to the e-mail address trajnostna.dediscina@fa.uni-lj.si until 27 June 2024.

The Summer School will feature lectures by renowned international and Slovenian experts who conduct research and work on issues related to heritage conservation and tourism. The keynote speaker Professor Dr Celia Martínez Yáñez from the University of Granada is a member of the ICOMOS Board, the vice-president of the ICOMOS International Committee for Cultural Tourism, and coordinator of the latest ICOMOS International Charter on Cultural Heritage Tourism.

The introductory thematic lectures will be given by Professor Dr Ljubica Knežević Cvelbar from the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, who will focus on the relevance of cultural heritage tourism for the sustainable development of local communities; Dr Matthias Ripp, a senior-level heritage manager and author focusing especially on UNESCO World Heritage Cities, will address the topic of the management of World Heritage Sites; and Professor Dr Kurt Luger, a chairholder of the UNESCO Chair for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Salzburg, will focus on the issue of the touristification of cultural heritage sites.

Celia Martínez Yáñez

Prof. Dr Celia Martínez Yáñez is an art history professor at the University of Granada, Spain, where she lectures and mentores students in the field of cultural heritage preservation. She is the director of the erph_ Scientific Electronic Journal of Historical Heritage (WOS ESCI indexed). Since 2017, she has been the vice-president of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee for Cultural Tourism. In this function, she coordinated the ICOMOS International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism: reinforcing cultural heritage protection and community resilience through responsible and sustainable tourism management 2022. She was a member of the ICOMOS Spain National Board between 2018 and 2023 and is a member of the ICOMOS Board since 2023.

She is expert and an evaluator of the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency since 2021. She is a co-coordinator of the ICOMOS University Forum Europe, which brings together the ICOMOS members working in academia.

Ljubica Knežević Cvelbar

Prof. Dr Ljubica Knežević Cvelbar is a full professor at the School of Business and Economics, University of Ljubljana, and a visiting professor at more than thirty universities worldwide. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Ljubljana. Her expertise includes tourism economics and sustainable development. Ljubica has fifteen years of academic and professional experience as a professor, researcher, and consultant. As a researcher or consultant, she has been involved in more than seventy projects, including European Commission-funded projects, UNDP grants, research and consulting projects for the national governments of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Montenegro, as well as many consultancy projects for local municipalities and SMEs. She has published more than forty papers in refereed tourism journals, including top-tier publications such as the Journal of Travel Research, Annals of Tourism Research, and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Her research work has made a significant impact on sustainable tourism development globally, and she received some of the most prominent international scientific awards in tourism, including the Tea Sinclair Award for Article Excellence (2016, 2019) and the 2019 Charles R. Goeldner Article of Excellence Award. Ljubica also serves as an editorial board member for six international academic journals and is a member of the AIEST (International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism). She is also the president of the Strategic Partnership for Research and Innovation in Tourism, a cluster of more than fifty crucial tourism stakeholders in Slovenia.

Matthias Ripp

Dr Matthias Ripp is a senior-level heritage manager with ten successful years in heritage conservation and management, project development, and international strategic policy coordination. He is a professional skilled in management, especially leadership and moderation of integrated working groups, as well as consulting, architectural history, urbanism, social planning, and tourism. His strengths include leadership, strategic planning, creative solutions, general management, and moderation skills. He is a heritage management pioneer specialising in fostering successful partnerships in international heritage communities. He published his contributions, focusing on new approaches to managing historic towns with particular attention to UNESCO World Heritage Cities, in many German and English-language publications.

Kurt Luger

Prof. Dr Kurt Luger studied communication science and economics in Munich and Salzburg and obtained a doctorate in 1979 and his post-doctoral qualification in communication science in 1989. He is a distinguished author and a chairman of the Society for Cooperation Alps–Himalaya – EcoHimal (based in Salzburg and Kathmandu, Nepal). He runs the INIT (Institute for Interdisciplinary Tourism Research) in Salzburg and is a chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Heritage and Tourism at the University of Salzburg.

The summer school will be held in English.

By taking part in the Summer School, each participant will receive a participation certificate and earn the following credits:

University and master's degree students : Slovenia+zoom: 2 ECTS, Slovenia+Austria 3 ECTS

Doctoral students of the Architecture University of Ljubljana programme: Slovenia + zoom: 3 ECTS, Slovenia+Austria: 5 ECTS

ZAPS Members: Slovenia+zoom: 7 T, Slovenia+Austria: 10 T

Application form

27 June 2024