The Fourteenth International Conference of Young Researchers in Heritage

Heritage and Local Development

In the postindustrial world as we know it, many researchers and practitioners are rethinking the notion of heritage in order to question its links to the various cultural, social, political and economic issues relating to space and place. In this context, heritage nowadays is considered not only as an agent of spatial transformation, but also as a factor of development and as a leverage for social cohesion. Understood as a territorial issue, heritage then becomes the subject of (local) public policies and citizen and community action, while giving rise to a renewal of both practices and theoretical approaches. Reflections born out of this new paradigm highlight the intersections between the heritage process and local development, as well as their various manifestations.

The Fourteenth International Conference of Young Researchers in Heritage will pursue these reflections in order to analyze and understand the links between heritage and local development, their meanings, their interpretations and their impacts on spatial and community development. The main objective of this conference is to examine the relationships, practices and discourses linking heritage, both tangible and intangible, to the social, economic and cultural development of territories. This will be accomplished by exploring ideas along the following principal, but non-exclusive, axes:

• Relationships between local players (political, economic, social, cultural and touristic, to name but a few) and heritage.
• The practices of heritage advocacy groups for local development purposes.
• Interpretation of the role of heritage in local development, through past or present projects.
• Discourses in publications and the media on the understanding and interpretation of heritage in various sources, and the ways in which it is linked to spatial and community development.

Since 2005, the International Conference of Young Researchers in Heritage has invited young scholars to present their research on various aspects of heritage, and has been held in Canada, Australia, Europe and South America. The conference is organized under the scientific supervision of the Canada Research Chair on Urban Heritage (Prof. Lucie K. Morisset and Prof. Luc Noppen, Université du Québec à Montréal) and its partner PARVI(Interuniversity Research on Narrativescapes, Cities and Urban Identities). The fourteenth installment of the International Conference of Young Researchers in Heritage will be held at the Université du Québec à Montréal from November 5 to 7, 2021, under the scientific direction of Myriam Joannette, Laurent Sauvage and Adélie De Marre.