Module Directory

This module explores how ideas about heritage are historically entangled with colonialism and its forms of knowledge. During the module, we will discuss the ways in which the fields of knowledge that have defined heritage—archaeology, anthropology, architecture, and preservation—have often been inseparable from colonial rule. We will also discuss the possibilities for decolonising heritage.

The module will provide a broad historical background to the development of heritage, examining heritage’s connections with colonialism across global time and space. Teasing out these links, we will grapple with the very material ways in which this process has played out. Likewise, we will begin to understand the material possibilities for decolonising heritage.

The aims of this module are:

• To provide an introduction to the links between heritage and colonialism.


• To understand the historical nature of those links across the globe.


• To understand how some of those links continue to endure.


• To ask whether heritage can ever be decolonised, how, and why.

Level 5:

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Understand the relationship between heritage and colonialism across time and space.


2. Describe, analyse and interpret the historical links between heritage and colonialism.


3. Write in an informed manner on the relationship between heritage and colonialism and to form an argument relating to various aspects of the topic.


4. Think about the place of heritage in the contemporary world, using wider scholarly and theoretical literature to understand heritage’s relationship with colonialism today.

Transferable skills

By the end of the module, students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:

1. Define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant.


2. Seek and organise the most relevant discussions and sources of information.


3. Process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments.


4. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure.


5. Write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.


6. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.


7. Think laterally and creatively (i.e., to explore interesting connections and possibilities, and to present these clearly rather than as vague hunches).


8. Maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position based on feedback.


9. Think critically and constructively.

The main objective of this module is to provide students with a solid grounding in the way that colonialism has shaped—and continues to shape—heritage and its connected practices. Doing so, students will begin to grapple with the consequences of this connection. They will also start to think through ways in which heritage work might (or might not) be decolonised.

During the module, students will be introduced to a global range of case studies connected to these historical issues. They will also discuss examples of decolonial heritage work, examining how and why the contemporary heritage world has sought to deal with these issues.

Indicative syllabus:

• Discussing colonial heritage


• Imperial plunder


• Colonial high noon/the rise of the ‘heritage sciences’


• Anti-colonial heritage


• The Cold War and decolonisation: the development of World Heritage


• The rise of intangible heritage: a new settlement?


• Repatriation and restitution


• The heritage of colonialism


• Decolonial heritage?

This module will be delivered via:

• Nine one-hour lectures by the module leader
• Nine one-hour seminars, in addition to an optional trip to a relevant museum outside the University of Essex.

There will be one Reading Week. The seminars will consist of a combination of contributions from students and classroom discussion. Students will read weekly assignments and additional readings. The module will also be available on Listen Again. Detailed information about the learning and teaching methods will be available in the outline on the Module Directory and from the full module description.