Ryoko Nakano is a professor of International Relations in the Faculty of International Studies at Kanazawa University, Japan. Her main research interest is heritage/memory politics. She has contributed to the field of heritage and international politics through her research on heritage conflicts in East Asia, particularly those related to Japanese memories of World War II.

Xing Jun Seah is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning exploring heritage controversies arising from urban renewal in Singapore and the cultural responses they generate. She has almost a decade of professional experience working in museums and galleries, and has been a Teaching Associate at the Potter Museum of Art and Science Gallery Melbourne for the University of Melbourne’s Museums and Collections since 2023. Her work examines the profound effects that changes to Singapore’s built environment have had on heritage preservation, communal identities, and senses of belonging, tracing how these transformations ripple across cultural and artistic realms. By analysing the interplay between urban redevelopment and creative practice, she investigates how contested spaces inspire innovative cultural expressions and new aesthetic paradigms, revealing complex ways urban space shapes memory, identity, and cultural imagination. Her research highlights creative practices as forms of critique and dissent against conventional physical and institutional constraints. With an academic background in literature, art history, and museum studies, she brings critical discourse and art historical lens to the study of the built urban environment. She is interested in the role art plays in shaping, uncovering, and fostering fresh perspectives.

I am a researcher with a strong interest in heritage and cultural landscapes, particularly their social roles and impacts. My experience spans research, teaching, and administration, including roles as a (Senior) Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant, Guest Lecturer, Summer School Lecturer, Assistant Archivist, and Military Training Officer. My research examines how history is mobilised through heritage, historic landscapes, and cultural landscapes, with particular attention to how societal perceptions and uses of history are shaped by heritage and landscape practices across international, national, regional, and local policy contexts. Drawing on a conceptualisation of power as the ability to mobilise resources, my PhD project explores how the selective use of history operates as a resource for shaping power relations in South Korea. Through an analysis of different forms and modes of power, the research addresses the question of for whom, and in what ways, heritage is mobilised and valued. I teach across modules in heritage, sociology, urban planning, landscape studies, and politics using a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. Methodologically, my work integrates qualitative methods, such as interviews, participant observation, visual methods, and archival research, with quantitative analysis, including survey data, GIS analysis, and statistical modelling.

Simon Kieser (Boarisch-Schwob) is a human rights and environmental lawyer specialising in Indigenous justice and heritage governance. He is a member of the ICOMOS Indigenous Heritage Working Group (IHWG) and an Associate of the University of Sydney Indigenous Research Hub. He is a Teaching Fellow and PhD Candidate at VUW.