DB6: Weaving Documentary and Critical Heritage Approaches Together
Tracks
6
| Tuesday, December 1, 2026 |
| 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM |
| RH102 |
Paper / Session Submitter
Anca Claudia Prodan
Co-Director | Researcher
Institute Heritage Studies | BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg
Weaving Documentary and Critical Heritage Approaches Together
Summary Abstract
Analysis of documentary heritage and UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme (MoW) offers untapped potential for exposing state authority, institutional bias, knowledge regimes and politics of visibility and erasure; making apparent politicisation, commercialisation and broader tensions within global heritage governance; and better integrating archival science, librarianship and information, media and communication studies into critical heritage studies.
To bring together interested scholars and practitioners, the ACHS Documentary Heritage Network has been initiated. In this inaugural gathering, founding members and session participants will share theoretical, methodological and practical insights and experiences. After introducing the network, flash presentations by the hosts will provide concise impulses for reflection, drawing on:
● Baltic national collections.
● East Asian MoW.
● Limnological glass plate negatives.
● Postdigital documentary heritage.
Roundtable discussions will ask participants to share documentary heritage experiences and challenges, connecting common threads that will inform the network’s working groups.
To bring together interested scholars and practitioners, the ACHS Documentary Heritage Network has been initiated. In this inaugural gathering, founding members and session participants will share theoretical, methodological and practical insights and experiences. After introducing the network, flash presentations by the hosts will provide concise impulses for reflection, drawing on:
● Baltic national collections.
● East Asian MoW.
● Limnological glass plate negatives.
● Postdigital documentary heritage.
Roundtable discussions will ask participants to share documentary heritage experiences and challenges, connecting common threads that will inform the network’s working groups.
Biographies
Anca Claudia Prodan explores heritage studies through science‑historical and philosophical perspectives, reimagining heritage research for a postdigital world using new materialist and relational approaches. Her long-term research, teaching and policy engagement on the Memory of the World has aimed at its positioning as a distinct thematic area within heritage studies.
Dominique van de Klundert focuses on photography as documentary heritage. Previous projects developed a ‘stereographic’ perspective on visual representation of contested UNESCO World Heritage Sites and analysed the evidentiary status and heritage qualities of early Australian photojournalism. Currently, she is investigating a limnological photographic estate in the process of ‘becoming-archive’.
Tamara Đokić is project assistant at the Institute Heritage Studies. She holds an MA in Modern Philology, and pursuing an MA in Cultural Policy and Management in Belgrade. Her interest in relational approaches has led her to research post-Yugoslav archives’ role in connecting literary and film heritage with identity.
