Interview
Peter Fowler
World Heritage Convention
Peter Fowler is a British archaeologist and landscape specialist.
A graduate of Oxford University, he served as secretary for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments in England before becoming Professor of Archeology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he is now Professor Emeritus. For two decades beginning in 1992, he advised ICOMOS and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre on cultural landscapes issues. As a freelance consultant, writer and researcher, he has published numerous works on rural and landscape archeology, particularly focused on prehistoric Britain.
During his years of involvement with World Heritage, Peter Fowler took part in numerous assessment and monitoring missions, both in the United Kingdom and abroad. In particular, he worked in close collaboration with Henry Cleere, ICOMOS coordinator for World Heritage. He was present at the Petite Pierre meeting on cultural landscapes in 1992 and at the expert meeting on the Global Strategy in Amsterdam in 1998. He produced an analysis of the first ten years of cultural landscape inscriptions and proposed recommendations, published as World Heritage Cultural Landscapes 1992-2002 in World Heritage Papers, no. 6 (2003).
Interview with
Peter Fowler
May 2022
The following audio excerpts are from an interview with Peter Fowler conducted by Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler in May 2022. He recounts his involvement as an evaluator for ICOMOS as well as his many mission experiences in the field. He also shares his critical vision of the work of the advisory bodies, the application of the concept of cultural landscapes and the implementation of the Global Strategy.
- 1. The World Heritage Convention
- 1a. Involvement of Peter Fowler in World Heritage
- 1b. Key objectives of the Convention
- 1c. Reform agenda at Cairns (2000)
- 1d. Successes and failures of the Convention
- 2. The World Heritage Committee
- 3. Advisory bodies
- 4. The World Heritage Centre
- 5. Involvement of States Parties
- 6. Global Strategy and cultural landscapes
- 7. Role of civil society in World Heritage
Oral Archives of the
World Heritage Convention
Under the leadership of the Canada Research Chair on Built Heritage at the University of Montreal, an international team of researchers conducts interviews with pioneers of World Heritage to capture memories of important moments in the history of UNESCO Convention.
Launched in 2006, this initiative is part of the UNESCO History project that celebrated the 60th anniversary of the creation of UNESCO. The Oral Archives project records the precious witness of people closely associated with the creation and implementation of the Convention. Their recollections and views have greatly enriched the book by Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler, Many Voices, One Vision: The Early Years of the World Heritage Convention (Ashgate/Routledge, 2013).
