Friday, 9th of June 2017

Venue: Canterbury Cathedral Lodge
Address: Canterbury Cathedral, The Precincts, Canterbury, Kent CT1 2EH

After World War II, the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in Event of Armed Conflict recognized the need to protect and preserve heritage for the benefit of mankind. In the last 60 years, this Convention has been ratified by 129 countries, the latest being the UK in February 2017, and has improved the international framework regulating the protection of cultural heritage in time of conflict. This conference will bring together senior government officials and leading academics from the UK and continental Europe to assess improvements and weaknesses of heritage protection in the current era of terrorist warfare, where ideology, social media and clickbait concur to destroy heritage as recently seen in Palmyra and Mosul. It will also assess developments in the fight against the trafficking of cultural property and discuss new ways of enhancing cooperation between states, as well as Europe and Great Britain in the uncertain time of Brexit. Finally, speakers will discuss how cultural diplomacy can facilitate dialogue between communities that have been torn apart by conflict.

See http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/linking-heritage/conference/ for full programme and details