Online lectures on UNESCO World Heritage open Thursday

The Preparatory Office for International Center for the Interpretation and Presentation of World Heritage Sites is holding an online lecture series titled “Understanding World Heritage Interpretation and Presentation” from Thursday to Nov. 26.

The center’s establishment was approved as a UNESCO Category 2 Center at the 40th UNESCO General Conference held last November. It was created to focus on research, education and dissemination of information related to world heritage interpretation and presentation. The center is expected to open in the city of Sejong in 2021. The preparatory office is supported by the Cultural Heritage Administration.

The lecture series is produced in collaboration with leading scholars and experts on world heritage.

A total of three series, consisting of six lectures each, have been planned with the second and third series being presented next year.

The first lecture is titled “Introduction to World Heritage Interpretation.” It will go online Thursday and be led by Neil Silberman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Other lectures in the first series will feature Shu-Mei Huang, a professor at National Taiwan University, and Yujie Zhu, a senior lecturer at the Australian National University, among other experts. Two lectures will be offered each month through November.

The lectures will be made available to the public via the CHA and preparatory offices’ YouTube channels and Facebook pages.

Each lecture consists of a 30-minute presentation and 15-minute Q&A session. Preregistration is not required for viewing.

The lectures and Q&A sessions will be conducted in English. Videos of the sessions will be posted later with Korean subtitles.

More details about the lecture can be found on the preparatory office’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)