Heritage studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that takes a critical look at the way we preserve, present and participate in heritage, including official and unofficial objects of heritage.
Most of us are consumers, visiting museums, landscapes and heritage sites for enjoyment and learning, perhaps even collecting historic objects or restoring an old house. The way in which objects and practices from the past have survived is often the result of deliberate choices, particularly when ‘official' heritage protection steps in. Scientific conservation involves another set of choices about what to preserve or enhance or discard, heritage tourism makes more decisions about the marketing messages; heritage curators create and select the official importance and meanings of the things they look after. Official heritage has its own history of changing ideas about how best to identify and protect heritage, and indeed an expanding definition of what ‘heritage' is. A critical approach makes these shifts in thinking explicit and explores their implications.
The Open University's Heritage Studies Research Group is a multi-disciplinary group involved in understanding the global nature of heritage and the ways in which it is managed in the past and present. We do this through our teaching, including Heritage Studies courses, and our varied research interests.
