The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict critically analyses therelationship between cultural heritage and conflict as well as the tangible and intangible remnants, traces and spaces of competing heritages and memories of the past in the present.
This interdisciplinary encyclopedia brings together leading scholars from different disciplines across the humanities and social sciences to provide the state of the art and most comprehensive overview of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of cultural heritage and conflict. The encyclopedia covers the fields of heritage and memory studies, cultural studies, museum studies, arts and media, literature, semiotics and performative studies, postcolonial studies, ethnology and anthropology, Holocaust and genocide studies, conflict and identity studies, archaeology and material culture studies, landscapes, conservation and restoration, cultural, public and oral history, critical and digital heritage studies.
The interdisciplinary scope of the encyclopaedia breaks new ground in the study of contemporary narratives of cultural heritage and conflict and the ways in which they broaden public understandings of the complex spacio-temporal dynamics between heritage, memory, conflict, and identity. By crossing academic, artistic and professional boundaries, the encyclopedia aims to offer an open space for the rich scholarship in these fields, and to contribute to a better understanding of the extent to which practices and discourses of heritage and conflict operate as vehicles at local, national and transnational levels.

Prof. Dr. Ihab Saloul is Founder and Research Co-Director of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture AHM at the University of Amsterdam, and Professor of Memory and Narrative at the CUE, the International Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities ＂Umberto Eco＂ at the University of Bologna. Saloul leads the research domain ’Conflict’ at the University of Amsterdam Research Priority Area, the Amsterdam Centre Cultural Heritage and Identity ACHI. Saloul held senior research positions and visiting professorships at various institutions such as the Institute of Advanced Studies (Istituto di Studi Avanzati (IAS), Istituto di Studi Superiori of the Alma Mater Studiorum, ISA at the University of Bologna, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies NIAS, the Forum Transregionale Studien (EUME, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, WIKO ), Free University Berlin (Center for Middle Eastern & North African Politics), Marburg University (CNMS, The Research Network Re- Configurations), and Maastricht University.
Saloul’s expertise extends beyond the fields of heritage and memory studies, and encompass cultural memory and conflict, museum studies, literary and narrative theory, identity politics, cultural analysis, post-colonialism, arts, aesthetics and visual culture as well as migration, diaspora and exile in contemporary cultural thought in the Middle East and Europe.

He is an editor of two book series, the ~Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan) and ’Heritage & Memory Studies’ (Amsterdam University Press AUP), and a co-founding Editor-in-Chief of the international peer-reviewed open access journal, International Journal of Heritage, Memory and Conflict (HMC) at the Amsterdam University Press AUP. His recent books include Martyrdom: Canonisation, Contestation and Afterlives (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination: Telling Memories (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012 / Paper Edition 2018), Zoom In: Palestinian Refugees of 1948, Remembrances (Republic of Letters, 2011).

Saloul teaches in the BA Cultural Studies, MA Heritage and Memory Studies, MA Museum Studies, and the ReMA Heritage, Memory and Archaeology of which he was the program co-coordinator from (2016-2020). Saloul chairs the Curriculum Committee of the MA Heritage Studies (MA Heritage and Memory Studies, MA Museum Studies, MA Curating Arts and Culture) at the University of Amsterdam.

Saloul developed and teaches advanced seminars such as the ReMA & PhD seminar (Heritage & Memory Theory, 2015- ) at the Huizinga Institute, the ReMA seminar (Violence and Postcolonial Remembrances, 2017-2019) at the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies OSL, and the BA course Competing Heritages and Memories at University of Amsterdam. Saloul supervises several PhD and Postdoc projects and participates in international scholarly committees and research networks. He is on the advisory board of Memory Studies Association (MSA) and currently leads the UvA part of the EU Horizon-2020 Rise Marie Curie project ’SPEME, Questioning Traumatic Heritage: Spaces of Memory in Europe, Argentina, Colombia which takes as its specific object of investigation a various array of spaces of memory, such as museums, former detention camps and sites of commemoration, to investigate how various traumatic pasts can be preserved and transmitted through space, and which kind of innovative actions might both improve knowledge of the past and serve as an opening to actual issues and new social subjects.