AHRC Innovation Scholars Secondment

Intangible heritage is fast becoming a prerequisite concept for the contemporary understanding and interpretation of heritage. However, in England, a prevailing focus on tangible (physical) heritage assets within policy and practice is resulting in an ever-growing lacuna in practitioner guidance and recommendations concerning how immaterial manifestations of culture can be accounted for when designing in historic contexts - be that new design, conservative repair, or adaptive reuse. This secondment proposal seeks to directly address this lacuna by connecting the secondee's academic research findings relating to the impact of intangible heritage on architectural and building conservation practices, to the industry challenges that are faced by the secondment host, Historic England, who are the public body that takes care of England's historic built environment. As the host's work is based on their statutory function, their projects typically respond to developments in legislation that are focused on the tangible qualities of heritage. This secondment proposal has therefore been purposefully designed to sit outside of this duty, meaning it offers the secondee and host a unique opportunity to begin exploring in detail how the management of change to historic places can reflect the intangible qualities of heritage, and how this can be utilised to innovate principles for design in historic contexts. During a 24-month period, this process of knowledge transfer between academia and industry will be developed across a number of case study projects and managed through the creation of a dedicated project Steering Group. A series of new practitioner recommendations ('pre-guidance') will be developed to not only be utilised by the secondment host, but also by the broader UK heritage sector, as a means to underpin their own disciplinary approaches in relation to this increasingly relevant component of the heritage industry and heritage management.

Project Details

Author(s)

Dr Johnathan Djabarouti

Location

England

Project Start Date

January 2024

Project End Date

January 2026

Budget

£45,172

Funder

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

Partners

Historic England

Collaborators

https://historicengland.org.uk

Awards

AHRC Innovation Scholars Grant

Research Outputs

Book Chapters

Djabarouti, J., 2022. 'Negotiating the spirit of place: towards a performative authenticity of historic buildings'. In Hermanová, M., Skey, M., Thurnell-Read, T. (eds.) Cultures of Authenticity, pp. 29-42, Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley.

Journal Articles

Djabarouti, J., 2021. 'Practice barriers towards intangible heritage within the UK built heritage sector', International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27 (11), pp. 1101-1116.

Djabarouti, J., 2021. 'Stories of feelings and things: intangible heritage from within the built heritage paradigm in the UK', International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27 (4), pp. 391-406.

Project Staff