E8: Memory-Making in Chinese Heritage Contexts: Practices, Power, and Mediation
Tracks
8
| Monday, November 30, 2026 |
| 12:10 PM - 1:25 PM |
| RH205 |
Overview
Stream: Relationality and the Legacy of Uses of Heritage
Paper / Session Submitter
Miss Zhuoting Li
Phd Candidate
Australian National University
Memory-Making in Chinese Heritage Contexts: Practices, Power, and Mediation
Summary Abstract
Building on Uses of Heritage, which reframes heritage from object to meaning-making practice, this panel examines how memory is produced, negotiated, and mediated across Chinese heritage contexts. Focusing on bottom-up voices across heritage sites, museums, and digital environments, the panel asks: Who has the authority to recognise particular pasts, and what political stakes are embedded in such recognition? Four studies explore these questions: Zhengbing He examines contestations over Yu’s cultural memory through spatial claims of different localities; Xiaochun Ma explores multidirectional memory at a colonial-socialist site by conceptualizing heritage as palimpsest; Shengdan Cai examines how VR’s memory-shaping effects emerge from the interplay of technology, hosting context, and visitor agency; Zhuoting Li examines visitors’ memory practices toward forgotten Chinese heritage in Australia, revealing how museum recognition exposes power relations through differentiated visitor responses. Together, these papers illuminate how power, mediation, and governance reshape memory practices, opening new pathways of meaning-making.
Biographies
Zhuoting LI is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University. Her research examines how Australian museums engage with Chinese migrant communities and the politics of institutional inclusion. Her research interests include critical heritage studies, community engagement and the politics of representation.
Dr. Shengdan CAI is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hong Kong Shue Yan University. Working at the intersection of digital technology, cultural heritage, and memory studies, she examines how immersive media, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mobile 3D scanning, transform the way individuals engage with and remember the past.
Zhengbing He is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University. Her doctoral project explores heritage-making of Da Yu myth in contemporary China. Her research interests include critical heritage studies, heritage politics, and entangled relationship between history and myth in local heritage-making processes.
Xiaochun MA is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Heritage and Museum studies at the Australian National University. Her. PhD project focuses on heritage education in Chinese higher education, encompassing Intangible Cultural Heritage practices within university settings and university students’ engagement with heritage communities through study tours.
