Marie Louise Stig Sørensen (University of Cambridge)

My aim with this introductory lecture is to place our concern with the historic city within the development over recent decades of a field of Heritage Studies. Using the 10th anniversary of the Cambridge Heritage Seminar to frame this concern, I shall consider how the topic of the future of Historic cities can be seen to articulate both explicit challenges (that we have presented in our call as the problems of contradictions and continuities) and also particular potentials and options. To locate these qualities of the historic city as heritage I shall contrast and link the topic of the historic city to the other themes that the Cambridge Heritage Seminars have been engaged with - such as intangible heritage, contestation, ‘Heritage that hurts’ and methodologies. The aim is to explore the connections – theoretical and practical -  between cities and other types of heritage and heritage concerns.

In recent years the number of urban, as opposed to relatively self-contained, World Heritage Sites (WHS) has been increasing. The designation of broader and more heterogeneous areas within often dynamic metropolises has led to both concern about the obvious tensions between conservation management and urban governance on the one hand, and the impact of designation on the every day decision making process in development management. As we enter a period of economic downturn we are able to reflect on the relationship between an international concept of outstanding universal value as expressed through the WHS concept, and the tangible need for cities to grow, regenerate, re-image and re-brand.

This paper will seek to examine the range of issues that the designation of world heritage sites in urban areas raises. Firstly the paper will summarise the impetus to designate urban world heritage sites looking at the concept of outstanding universal value in relation to dynamic urban areas, what UNESCO calls historic urban landscapes.  Secondly the paper will investigate the meaning attached to an urban WHS that often encompass parts of a city that have an extremely heterogeneous character and scope for very different interpretations of heritage value. This has very real implications for different scenarios of future urban development explored by planning authorities in their statutory plans. Thirdly, the paper will examine the concept of buffer zones in relation to WHS and how this additional level of control applied to the context for the site is confusing an already complex set of procedures at the local level of site management. Finally the paper will analyse the negotiations around particular regulatory decisions in what is a multi-scaled context of protection, conservation and management. The paper concludes with some reflections on where the management of urban WHS might go in the future given that we have the space to breath before new sites are designated.
Key words: world heritage site, planning, development management.

John Pendlebury’s research mostly falls within two broad themes. First, he undertakes empirical and conceptual work on the interface between contemporary cultural heritage policy and other policy processes. Second, he undertakes more historically focused work, which has principally focused on how historic cities have been planned in the past, particularly in the mid-C20, considering how the historic qualities of such cities were conceived and balanced with modernising forces. He is currently Head of School, School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University.

Aidan While is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Town & Regional Planning, University of Sheffield

The concept of historic environment, historic landscapes and archaeological parks underpins the creation of a cultural and natural environment where different landscapes, architectural constructions and human activities coexist. Historic landscapes are part of World Heritage Sites under the protection of Unesco as ‘combined works of nature and man’ designated in Article 1 of the 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage. In such cultural environments, the emphasis is placed upon the coexistence of a variety of cultural, natural, historical, social and architectural values, which reflect the different interest groups, scholar research, education, tourism and local economic development. Monuments, buildings and architectural constructions are the remains of fragmented historical landscapes of the past and they carry multiple meanings; their features constantly change and alter to suit present associations and beliefs.
Under this scope a number of questions are raised:  Which past is presented? Is there a coherent landscape which presents the continuity and successive history of the place? How do local communities and foreign visitors interact with the Athenian past? In order to demonstrate how the different and successive historic phases of the past are reflected in historic environments, I will use as a case study the revival of the historic centre of Athens. In particular, I will examine how historic buildings and architectural constructions and sites are incorporated alongside the main walkway, the Grand Promenade, of the historic centre of Athens.

Afroditi Chatzoglou has obtained an MPhil in Archaeological Heritage and Museums from Cambridge in addition to her first degree in Archaeology/History of Art from the University of Athens, Greece.
Afroditi's doctoral research focuses on the landscape and preservation of historic centers in Southern Europe. She has participated in excavations in Athens and Ancient Thira, and in the digital preservation of cultural material supported by the Third Information Society program of the European Union. She has also designed exhibitions for museums and worked as a teacher of the Greek Language.

This presentation will open by outlining the concept of the sustainable city from a historical perspective and through the eyes of key theorists and practitioners from the early-twentieth century onwards. It will relate the concept to traditional patterns of urban development and relationships to their hinterland and interpret it in the context of today’s holistic agenda of sustainability – environmental, social, economic and cultural – in a globalised world.  
The presentation will illustrate alternative present-day approaches to the strategic and detailed management of historic cities, from the metropolitan scale downwards. It will conclude by exampling the theoretical and practical models that accord most closely with an anthropological vision for the balanced evolution of historic cities in today’s and tomorrow’s world, one that absorbs challenges and contradictions and treats conservation and creative continuity as two sides of the same coin.

Dennis Rodwell, MA(Cantab), architect-planner, works internationally as a consultant focusing on the promotion and achievement of best practice in the management of the historic environment. Clients include the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Division of Cultural Heritage, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the World Bank, the British Council and the UK Local Authority World Heritage Forum. He has been rapporteur to recent UNESCO and ICOMOS events focused on the historic urban landscapes initiative. Previously a principal in private practice, he has also served as a local authority conservation officer, and successfully promoted the rescue of a number of historic buildings at risk. He writes and publishes widely, including Conservation and Sustainability in Historic Cities, Blackwell, Oxford, 2007.

Over the last three centuries, the city of Edinburgh has been no stranger to the issues that face the modernisation of historic urban areas. From its expansion in the 18th Century, which led to the creation of the Georgian New Town, to a scheme that was recently proposed to revitalise the heart of the medieval Old Town, development within the Scottish Capital has held a long standing tradition of debate and scrutiny. However, despite an awareness of the need for a sensitive approach to the city's development, the root of many of the concerns that the likes of Lord Henry Cockburn and Sir Patrick Geddes voiced over a century ago are still prevalent to this day - to the extent that in 2008, Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site status came under review by its awarding bodies over concerns of continuing inappropriate development within the World Heritage Site.
One area of The Site that has remained as a relatively unchanging sentinel over the last 150 years, is a small protrusion of volcanic rock to the east of the New Town known as the Calton Hill. This area is a significant example of a 19th Century designed landscape situated within an urban environment and is possibly best known for W.H. Playfair’s ideas of the "Picturesque" in urban planning. In addition, it is home to a number of nationally important edifices, which play a vital role in documenting not only the progress of architectural design, science and engineering throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries, but also reflects the philosophical and political climate of these eras.
However, the lack of a practical use for these structures has resulted in many of them now being in advanced states of disrepair, to the extent that the area is now highly vulnerable to the threats of vandalism, decay and the ever increasing problem of climate change. Yet, the practicalities of funding a project to protect and repair an area that has currently little practical use within the modern urban environment, but is regarded as a pivotal and iconic part of the World Heritage Site leads to solutions that are often at odds with the sites intangible cultural elements and the essence of the area as a whole. This has created an array of problems that mirror many of the issues surrounding previous development projects found throughout the historic city.
This paper will reflect on the successes and failures identified from the city's past development and discuss how this knowledge could be applied to protect and enhance an area that the city is viewed from. To demonstrate this, it will discuss the current approaches that heritage bodies and local government are using to tackle the problems identified on Calton Hill, and by using the lessons learnt from the surrounding cityscape, how these can be usefully applied to the area's conservation in the present and ultimately the management of its future.

Maria Costi was born in Cyprus on 07/08/78. She grew up in New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Cyprus. She studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens. She also studied one year in Valladolid, Spain. For the last 4 years she is working in Cyprus and currently runs her own architecture office with David Castrillo. She took part in the Biennale for Young Artists in Naples, 2005 and has also been selected to represent Cyprus in the Biennale of Young Artists in Skopje, Sept. 2009. She has presented projects in various workshops and seminars around Europe, and participated as a Tutor for both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot University students in the EASA Cy. She lives and works in the Medieval Walled city of Nicosia and works on many restoration projects. She is also a founding member of the NGO “Awake within the walls”, (and the secretary of the NGO), an active group of residents of the Walled city of Nicosia that address and fight the current social-urbanistical and architectural problems of the old town along with legislation violations from both the authorities and private owners.

John Preston is Historic Environment Manager for Cambridge. After studying Architecture and Art History at Cambridge, he worked as a planner in Suffolk; working with timber-framed buildings led him to specialise in conservation. In the 1980s, he helped to set up the Cambridgeshire Architecture Workshop taking architects into schools, and in efforts to set up a Heritage Education Centre in Cambridge. He has worked for Cambridge City Council for nearly 20 years, and now manages the conservation and tree teams. He has been promoting conservation at national level for over 20 years, first with the Association of Conservation Officers and now as Education Secretary for the Institute of Historic Building Conservation.  Published papers include “The Context for Skills Education and Training” (“Journal of Architectural Conservation“ 10th anniversary issue, November 2006).

The corner of King’s Parade (later Trumpington Street) and Bene’t Street in the city centre of Cambridge has seen considerable activity over its lifespan. While the alleged ‘heart’ of the university lies a few hundred meters north in the Senate House and the Old Schools, this paper argues that a rereading of the many lives of this particular street corner suggests it, too, should be a candidate for inclusion on the list. But in so doing, this paper contends in the same stroke that the idea of a ‘historic centre’ is partly a misnomer, or at least an oxymoron: that a reconsideration of urban historicity leads to the conclusion that any city contains infinitely many historic centres. Drawing on philosophical work by Walter Benjamin and Michel de Certeau as well as site-specific work by Francis Cornford and John Taylor (designer of the infamous Corpus Christi clock), I suggest that this subtle intersection of histories invites an equally subtle reappraisal of the aims and ideals of historic preservation.

A native of Mississippi, Benjamin Morris is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Previously educated at Duke University and the University of Edinburgh, his research focuses on the relationship between cultural heritage and the environment, specifically the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. His creative work (poetry and prose) has been has been published and won recognition in both the US and the UK. Recently he co-edited the anthologies "Stolen Stories" and "The Golden Hour Book: Volume II", both from Forest Publications in Edinburgh.

In line with the retrospective tone of this tenth anniversary seminar, I will reflect on the debate about ‘the Heritage Industry’ that took place in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. My books On Living in an Old Country (1985) and A Journey Through Ruins (1991) were among the texts involved in this dispute, and I have been reviewing the dispute in the course of preparing the new editions published last February. I will touch on some of the themes of that argument, including, perhaps, J.H. Plumb’s idea of ‘History’ and its claimed superiority to ‘the past, gentrification, the possible connection between ‘heritage’ and politics, race, economic regeneration, and also the origin of the phrase ‘the Heritage Industry’, which has wrongly been attributed to Robert Hewison’s 1987 book of that title. I will argue, with the help of various historical examples, that the proper place for critical considerations is within the conservation movement itself.

Patrick Wright is a Professor at the Institute of Cultural Analysis, Nottingham Trent University, and a fellow of the London Consortium.

This paper analyses the idea of the ‘holy basin’ in Jerusalem from a critical architectural and urban perspective. The example of Jerusalem shows how conservation practices and perceptions of ‘sacred space’, first introduced under the British Mandate, have today become political tools in the Israeli struggle to dominate the city (Pullan 2009). They have profoundly altered not just the urban fabric but the very understanding of the role and integration of the historic parts of the city with modern Jerusalem.
The ‘holy basin’ (variously referred to as the ‘historic’ or ‘visual’ basin) is a geographic zone surrounding the historic Old City situated in East Jerusalem. This zone contains the majority of sites holy to Islam, Judaism and Christianity in the city, and is considered to possess a special visual, aesthetic relationship with the walled city integral to Jerusalem’s rich religious and heritage value. This ‘unique’ zone has been subject to contested planning policies and settlement activities by Israelis who have controlled East Jerusalem since 1967 (Dumper 2002). At the same, the basin has featured prominently in Israeli contributions to recent peace negotiations and initiatives, many of which have called for some form or ‘special regime’ for the ‘holy basin’ (sometimes with a degree of internationalisation) to be instated as part of future agreements on Jerusalem as a divided or shared capital within the framework of a two-state solution. Palestinian negotiators have so far remained sceptical about Israeli proposals relating to the ‘holy basin’. Despite the pervasive use of the basin idea in the Israeli and western discourse surrounding the city, particularly in relation to alternative governance, legal and security frameworks (Ramon 2007) there is a general lack of clarity about where the idea of the basin originated, on what grounds a ‘special zone’ within Jerusalem is deemed necessary, and where its precise boundaries lie. Most significantly the implications for the everyday life of Jerusalem (Pullan 2006, 2007) with respect to both its relevance for any political agreement and the overall well-being of the city is rarely addressed in any depth.
The paper asks why the idea of the ‘holy basin’ has come to be perceived as fundamental for future plans of the city both by Israeli planners and policymakers, as well as western-based international peace initiatives. Exploring why the Holy Basin has become so ingrained in the Israeli and Western imagination of Jerusalem leads to an examination of the role that planning and conservation discourse have played in attempting to define and attach clearly delimited geographic borders in the conceptualisation of a heritage zone.

Dumper, M. (2002) The Politics of Sacred Space: The Old City of Jerusalem in the Middle East Conflict. London Boulder, Co., Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Pullan, W. (2006) 'Locating the Civic in the Frontier: Damascus Gate', in Miessen, M. and Basar, S. (eds.) Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice. Cambridge Mass and London: MIT Press and Frankfurt: Revolver, pp. 109-22.
Pullan, W. (2007) 'Contested Mobilities and the Spatial Topography of Jerusalem', in Purbrick, L., Aulich, J. and Dawson, G. (eds.) Contested Spaces: Sites, Representations and Histories of Conflict. London: Palgrave Macmillian pp. 49-73.
Pullan, W. & M. Gwiazda (2009), 'Jerusalem's "City of David": the Politicisation of Urban Heritage', in Webber, A., U. Staiger & H. Steiner (eds.) Memory Culture and the Contemporary City: Building Sites. London: Palgrave Macmiliian (forthcoming).
Ramon, A. (2007) The Historic Basin of Jerusalem. Problems and Possible Solutions [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Dr Wendy Pullan is Senior Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. She is Principal Investigator for 'Conflict in Cities and the Contested State’ (www.conflictincities.org), supported by the ESRC Large Grants Programme. From 2003 to 2007, she directed ‘Conflict in Cities: Architecture and Urban Order in Divided Jerusalem’, upon which the present project is built. In 2006, Dr Pullan received the Royal Institute of British Architects inaugural President’s Award for University Led Research for work on Conflict in Cities.

Shadia Taha is a second-year PhD student at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. She has an MPhil from the Department of Archaeology. Her MPhil thesis is entitled: ‘Analysis and Interpretation of a Lower Palaeolithic Site in Saudi Arabia’. She also completed a BA (Hons) in Social Policy at Anglia Ruskin University. She co-edited Azania Special Volume XXX1X2004 in honour of John Alexander.
Shadia’s research interests lie in ethnography and cultural heritage. She is currently conducting research for her PhD dissertation, focusing on the case of Suakin, a Red Sea port in north eastern Sudan. In December 2007, she attended and participated in a workshop to interview and record both the tangible, and intangible cultural heritage of Suakin. Shadia is currently one of the organisors of the Heritage Researchers Group (since 2007). Also with post-docs and postgraduate students based in the Archaeology Department, she has just launched an African Archaeology Society in Cambridge.

The production of cultural heritage faces important challenges in countries where urban or regional planning do not fully consider the specificities of patrimonial management, where investments in the safeguarding or re-qualification of built structures and conservation of natural sites are modest, where private businesses are often voracious and the effective access to democratic citizenship rights is uncertain.
The empirical subject matter of this presentation is the process of social production of cultural heritage in the Brazilian region officially designated the Museu Aberto do Descobrimento (The Open-Air Discovery Museum), in Southern Bahia (Federal Decree 1874, dated April 22, 1996).   The analysis of this particular case seeks to help understand crucial difficulties faced by cultural preservation in the contemporary world, particularly the challenge of nurturing senses of place and historicity in regions that experience not only fast urban growth and socioeconomic change, but also significant concentration of wealth. 

The following topics will be highlighted:

1. The making of landscapes of history: the attribution of cultural historic value to urban and natural sites; conflict and negotiation in the preservation arena; the role of cultural brokers; the clash between heritage standards and values and local senses of place and identity.
2. Empirical background: Brazil’s “Discovery Coast” as a landscape of history. The transformation of former colonial settlements and their natural environments into officially protected heritage sites since the 1940s.
3. Perspectives opened by the Brazilian Registry of National Intangible Cultural Heritage (Federal Decree 8551, August 4, 2000) and by UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, of October 17, 2003.

• History makes a difference: from cultural differences to marketing differentials; commoditization of ways of life and senses of place for global consumption. Heritage for sale.
• In conclusion, challenges faced by measures that envisage the strengthening of senses of historicity in the social appropriation of preserved sites: place, identity and belonging in contemporary social experience.
  

  Publications in English include:

  Heritage as culture: limits, uses and implications of intangible cultural heritage inventories. In: KONO, T. (Ed.). Intangible cultural heritage and intellectual property: communities, cultural diversity and sustainable development. Antwerp: Intersentia. 2009. ISBN 978-90-5095-758-8

  African-Brazilian Cultural References in National Heritage: Questions of Cultural Politics. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology.  Associação Brasileira de Antropologia. Brasília, DF. v. 5, n. 1, Jan-Jul, 2008. At http://www.vibrant.org.br/portugues/artigosv5n1.htm, Access Nov.19, 2008.

  Cultural diversity and the politics of difference in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. In
  Blake, J. (ed) Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage – Challenges and Approaches. Institute of Art and Law, UK, 2007. ISBN 1-903987-10-5.

  Diversity, heritage and cultural politics. Theory Culture & Society: annual review, London, v. 24, n. 78, p. 290-296, Dec. 2007. ISSN 0263-2764.

  A place for intangible cultural heritage in our common future. In: Workshop for youth participation in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and communities’ development. Tsuruoka. ACCU - Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO, 8-11 June, 2007. At http://www.accu.or.ip/ich/em/pdf/d2007Accenture.pdf. Access Feb.15, 2009.

  Reconsidering the social aspects of sustainability: integrated conservation of the urban environmental heritage. In Zancheti, S.M. (ed) Conservation and urban sustainable development: a theoretical framework. Recife: Editora da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. 1999. ISBN: 85-7315-114-5.

  The War of Places: Symbolic Boundaries and Liminalities in Urban Space. Theory, Culture and Society, 13(4). London: Sage, 1996. ISSN 0263-2764.

Antonio A. Arantes (BA, M.Sc. University of São Paulo; PhD University of Cambridge /Kings College) is professor of social anthropology at UNICAMP – State University of Campinas, Brazil, and director of Andrade e Arantes Consultancy. He has taught and undertaken academic research in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, France, Portugal, the United States and England. His expertise in public policy and cultural heritage was consolidated in consulting assignments to several programs realized by non-governmental, governmental and multilateral organizations such as, respectively, Artesanato Solidário / Solidary Crafts, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, UNESCO and WIPO. He developed significant professional experience in policymaking and management of public institutions as President of the Sao Paulo State Council for Historic Preservation (CONDEPHAAT) and of the Brazilian National Institute for Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN). Under his presidency of IPHAN, the Department of Immaterial Heritage and the National Program for Immaterial Cultural Heritage were implemented. He gave workshops on cultural heritage inventory methods in Brazil, Madagascar and Mozambique, developed several research projects, and published books, articles and technical reports about culture and politics, with particular emphasis on cultural heritage and related subjects. Relevant intellectual contributions in the field of cultural heritage also include the development of the methodology adopted by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture for the National Inventory of Cultural References, as well as papers presented at national and international experts’ meetings, particularly in France, Japan and India. He is a former President of the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) and of the Latin American Anthropological Association (ALA).

Lei Gao is a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield. Lei received MA Architecture (2003) and BA Architecture (2000) in China and have been studying Landscape Architecture in the UK since 2003. Her research interests include Chinese garden history and conservation history, conservation ethics and values of garden heritage. Her PhD thesis, entitled Attitudes and Approaches towards HistoricGardens in China (1910s-2010s), aims to explore the Chinese values to their garden heritage and tradition in the 20th century and today, and how they have been changing under the influence of various political and social demands.

Taking the Beijing Old Inner City as a case study, this article reveals the problems caused by the Renewal Projects, and analyses the economic and social factors that should be considered in the conservation for the historic areas.
In the beginning of 1990s, the Beijing Municipal Government made two important decisions: One is launching the renewal projects in the Inner City; the other is to designate 25 Historical & Cultural Conservation Areas.
Comparing to the smooth progress of the renewal projects, the result of the conservation planning for Beijing Inner City is not so satisfied.
Although the renewal projects had well balanced the investment and revenue, they had totally destroyed the traditional appearance of the renewed sites.
Hence, in 2000, Beijing Municipal Government resolutely stopped the Renewal Projects, and invited some institutes to draw up the Conservation Plan for the 25 designated Historic Areas.
Looking like a zoning plan, The Conservation Planning sets up a general target for each historic area and gives detailed regulations regarding to the physical environment such as land use, FAR(Floor Area Ratio), height control, and even the suggested architecture style, etc.  Nevertheless, this plan has not answered the question how to realize the goal politically, socially, and especially, financially. 
Through the in-houses site investigation, it can be found that, three kinds of local people are playing the key role for the declination and vitalization of Inner City.  The first one is Old Pekinese who had lived here for generations; the second is so-called Bad Man who just want to get some real estate income here, The third people is unique people who like traditional Beijing but without the ownership of the houses.     
The House Administration Office owns the public houses which account for the most part of buildings in old cities and be responsible for their daily maintenance.  Ironically, no one beyond them truly wants to see the deterioration of traditional houses!  Because, once the miserable living condition is unaccepted, they will get the right to carry out the renewal projects, and through this process, they can get much political and financial benefit.
All of the above issues will be showed and discussed in this paper, and it will display the complicated situation with regard to the conservation and revitalization for Beijing Inner City

KEYWORDS:
Historic Areas, Conservation, Beijing

Born in 1966, Mr. Zhang Min graduated from Tsinghua University in 1987 and worked in Shanghai as an architect.  In 1989 he came back Tsinghua pursuing his Master degree.  In 1999, he worked in Kunming, southwest China, as the Assistant Director of Yunnan Provincial Planning Commission, and in 2001, he stayed in Paris as a visiting scholar in SEMABA.  At now, he is an Associate Professor in Department of Urban Planning at Tsinghua.  As the consultants, Mr. Zhang had ever drawn up conservation and revitalization planning for many cities across whole China such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Datong, Chengde, Kasigar, Shenyang, Hohhot, and Beijing, etc.

Ron Van Oers was trained as an urban planner (MSc, 1993) and specialized in urban conservation management (MTD, 1996) at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he received his doctorate (PhD, 2000) on a research into the principles of Dutch colonial town planning.
For the past 9 years he has worked at UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre in Paris gaining skills and experience world-wide in project management, programme design and policy development. Since 2001 he manages a US$ 2 million Netherlands Trust Fund at the Centre and between 2003 and 2005 he was responsible for the Latin American and Caribbean Region as Chief of Unit.
Since 2005 he coordinates the Programme for Small Island Developing States and the World Heritage Cities Programme, spearheading the international ‘Historic Urban Landscape Initiative’. In addition and as per January 2009 he has been appointed Deputy-Director of the World Heritage Training and Research Institute for the Asia-Pacific Region in China.

Christopher Young is an archaeologist who has worked for many years for English Heritage and its predecessors.  in the English Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments.  In 1995 he became Director for the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site, completing and implementing its Management Plan.  Since 1999, he has been English Heritage’s first Head of World Heritage and International Policy, responsible for the development of English Heritage’s international strategy.  On the World Heritage side, he advises on Management Plans and new nominations for World Heritage Sites in England, and on polices for protecting and enhancing those Sites.
He is part of the UK observer delegation to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.  He has taken part in international conferences and missions, both for UNESCO and for the UK government.  He has worked on World Heritage Site nominations and/or Management Plans in Laos, Mongolia, Bangladesh, North Korea and Vietnam.