International Symposium on "Sharing Our Heritages: New Challenges for Site Conservation and Protection, and for Tourism Management"

An international Symposium on "Sharing Our Heritages: New Challenges for Site Conservation and Protection, and for Tourism Management" will be organized by UPV (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia) in Valencia, Spain, from 7 to 10 February 2008.

The idea is to celebrate the end of the Sharing Our Heritages (SOH) exchange programme (2005-2008) sponsored by the EU and the Australian Government through a special event. Speakers from all 8 SOH universities (namely Charles Darwin University (CDU), Curtin University of Technology (CUT), Deakin University and University of Western Sydney (UWS) in Australia, and the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation at the Catholic University of Leuven (RLICC / KUL, Belgium), Brandenburg Technical University (BTU, Cottbus, Germany), University College Dublin (UCD, Ireland) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV, Spain) in Europe) and their students will participate in this event. Other heritage professionals, academics and students are also invited to this event.

The interventions will address issues such as "World Heritage in a time of globalization", "Public-private partnerships for conservation", "Conflicting visions between donors and conservationists". The Symposium will also count contributions on "How to conciliate conflicting interests between international conventions strategies and local communities' policies", "How may sustainability match strategies for World Heritage sites commercialization", "Preventive conservation as an innovative strategy for sustainability" and "Heritage interpretation and its limits".

A publication will follow.