Title: Participatory Heritage Revisited 

Publisher: Facet Publishing

Editors: 

  • Henriette Roued, Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Research Section, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen (roued@hum.ku.dk)
  • Andrea Copeland, Department of Library & Information Science, Indiana University (ajapzon@iu.edu)

In 2017, Participatory Heritage (eds. Roued and Copeland 2017) presented international perspectives on the complexity of issues surrounding the preservation of local cultural heritage. With a particular focus on how formal cultural heritage institutions and community members partnered to support each other in the processes of creation, organization, access, use and preservation of local heritage artifacts. Since that time, both cultural, as well as actual, wars escalated with new realities emerging for minoritized groups and institutions largely dependent on state funding. One of the main themes or assumptions of this first volume has now been challenged by the current world order, primarily, that formal heritage institutions could provide stable long term preservation and provide a wider public access to local knowledge, than the community heritage groups themselves. Given that the fates of heritage institutions are often controlled by shifts in political powers, the editors can’t help wondering whether they were a bit naive about their faith in the stability of these institutions. 

In this revisited edition, we therefore seek to critically re-examine those assumptions in light of an altered political and cultural landscape. Over the past decade, many formal heritage institutions, particularly public ones, have become increasingly vulnerable to political shifts that constrain their funding, autonomy, and ability to serve communities on their own terms. While institutions were, in part, positioned as long-term stewards of community-generated collections, increasing this promise was uneven at best, and, for some communities, illusory from the start. Meanwhile research into the communities themselves and their heritage practices has developed further within the fields of information and heritage studies, as well as public history and archaeology (Roued, Deckers, and Thomas 2025).  

As diversity initiatives are being challenged, outreach staff reduced, and grant pathways diminishing, some institutions may find themselves increasingly reliant on the very communities they once presumed to support. At the same time, many community-based heritage efforts have continued to demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and continuity amid institutional precarity. Now ten years after the first volume, this moment, marked by instability, contestation, and creative disorder, offers the opportunity to rethink where durability, authority, and care for heritage reside, and to reflect on who heritage institutions are for, what they are meant to sustain, and what forms of participation and preservation might be growing beyond or alongside their walls. 

We are looking to include a variety of different angles on this topic, including but not limited to case-based essays or perspective of theory on:

  • Community-led models of heritage practice (e.g. collection building, stewardship, preservation, and communication/outreach) in contexts where formal institutions are absent, politically constrained, or intentionally bypassed, including explorations of resilience, autonomy, and alternative infrastructures for sustaining participatory heritage work.
  • Critical examinations of institutional vulnerability, power, and precarity, including accounts of how political shifts on cultural policy, funding regimes, diversity backlash, and governance structures reshape the role of heritage institutions and how institutions renegotiate (or fail to renegotiate) their relationships with the communities they serve.
  • Emergent theoretical frameworks for participatory heritage in conditions of instability, including perspectives that interrogate assumptions about permanence, authority, care, access, and legitimacy, and that explore productive forms of “organized chaos,” mutual reliance, and reconfigured roles between communities and institutions.

Scholars and practitioners from across the disciplines (regardless of rank, position, or institutional affiliation) are invited to submit a 200-word abstracts on this topic by 1 March 2026 to the editors, Henriette Roued (roued@hum.ku.dk) and Andrea Copeland (ajapzon@iu.edu). 

Collaboratively authored submissions are very welcome, particularly submissions which include community members as co-authors.

For accepted abstracts, final manuscripts due 1 June 2026. Chapter length will be determined once we have finalised the number of chapters to be included. 

Chapter authors will be invited to provide peer review for 2 other chapters.

Important dates:

  • 1 March 2026: deadline for abstracts
  • 1 June 2026: deadline for final chapter manuscripts

For more context on the 2017 version, see: 

Participatory Heritage (2017), edited by Henriette Roued & Andrea Copeland, Facet Publishing. https://doi.org/10.29085/9781783301256

See Participatory Heritage 2017 table of content

Read Introduction: What is participatory heritage?

For more on the concept of Heritage Practice Communities, see:

Roued, Henriette, Pieterjan Deckers, and Suzie Thomas. 2025. ‘Heritage Practice Communities: What Are They and Why Are We Talking about Them?’, International Journal of Heritage Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2025.2591620. 

Get free access here (if you don’t have an institution subscription): https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/DRPSQM5ZWTANEIRKKI9W/full?target=10.1080/13527258.2025.2591620