International Scientific Conference in Krakow

Department of Cultural Landscape and Heritage
Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow 
invites to an International Scientific Conference on: 

CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE SPACE OF A HISTORICAL CITY. ASIA IN EUROPE - EUROPE IN ASIA.

held  on 5-6 December 2021
in the Auditorium of the Main Library of the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow,
at ul. Bobrzyńskiego 10

In 2021, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. This extremely important document not only defines new principles of heritage management in historical cities but also redefines the approach to their entire resource.

The challenges faced by contemporary historical cities, in a way, force the implementation of strategies that will reconcile the need to protect tangible and intangible cultural heritage with the constant challenges facing the developing urban spaces. As recent years have seen the largest and systematically increasing migration of people to cities, the latter becoming centers of intellectual, industrial, economic, and technological development, this forces them to provide adequate living conditions for their inhabitants.

Cultural heritage, material, and non-material space show a close relationship between the city's development and its openness to tourism and the quality of life of its inhabitants. This particular heritage protection poses a challenge to the need to preserve common individual values and historical legacy. Hence, all the actions involving protecting, guarding, and saving it are implemented according to various concepts and strategies, especially visible when comparing the historical cities of Europe and Asia. However, Europeans and Asians show some similarities in the preservation of their historic cities’ cultural landscape so one often finds traces of European heritage in Asian cities and vice versa.

Key Topics
The conference offers a chance for participants from diverse disciplines and professions to engage in interdisciplinary dialogues on topics that include, but are not limited to:

• current problems and challenges historical cities face in terms of protecting their local cultural heritage;
• cultural code’s definitions, allowing i.a. the simultaneous functioning of tourists and residents in the city space, but also understanding each other's needs and expectations;
• cultural code in understanding the heritage of historic cities in both Europe and Asia;
• tourist market building and managing to preserve the authenticity of historical places and attend to the needs of residents and tourists of cities such as Krakow;
• issues related to the traces of European and Asian culture in specific urban spaces;

An important dimension of this conference is to establish lasting collaborative links with specialists from various fields working on cultural heritage and its protection, historical cities management, and use of individual cultural code in specific industries, including tourist, cultural or event. By creating a platform for dialogue, the organizers will try to encourage conference participants to share their initiatives and to present good practices undertaken in historic cities for the presentation, promotion, and protection of cultural heritage.

As the organizers of the first conference devoted entirely to the cultural heritage of urban space, we strongly believe that our idea will become an impulse to build a broad platform for the exchange of experiences and further cooperation.

The conference will be hybrid in nature, thus it is possible to participate through the streaming platform as well as in the conference room.

Conference language: Polish and English

Proposals, abstracts, and other forms of contribution and participation should be submitted by October 30, 2021, to the following e-mail address: konferencja.media@upjp2.edu.pl