The Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage and Global Change (JPI CH) is pleased to announce that the complete recordings of our major dissemination event, “Transnational Research for a Wider Impact: The Role of Cultural Heritage in a Changing World,” are now available for public viewing.

This milestone event, organized in collaboration with the Palace of Versailles on 26–27 November 2025, brought together over 150 participants, both on-site and online, to witness the impactful results of 22 transnational research projects. The conference explored the societal impact of heritage through five cross-cutting thematic sessions, delving into crucial topics such as Digital Innovations, Community Co-creation, Reinterpreting Pasts for Social Justice, Heritage Under Pressure from Environmental Change, and Heritage in Context.

A pivotal moment of the conference was the look ahead to the future of European heritage research. The event’s conclusion featured a presentation of the new European Partnership for Resilient Cultural Heritage (RCH). This ambitious, large-scale initiative is set to build upon the legacy and collaborative spirit of the JPI CH, ushering in a new era for heritage science in Europe. The presentation underscored that the impacts and knowledge generated by the projects at Versailles are not an endpoint, but a crucial foundation for this next chapter of strategic, impact-driven research.

For those who missed it or wish to revisit the rich discussions, the full playback of both days offers a front-row seat to the future of heritage research.

Watch the Event Playback

Day 1 sessions include: Digital Innovations, Co-creating Heritage, and Reinterpreting Pasts.

Day 2 sessions include: Heritage Under Pressure, Heritage in Context, and a forward-looking conclusion presenting the future opportunities through the RCH Partnership.

We extend our gratitude once again to all the speakers, moderators, and attendees who made this event a resounding success. We hope these resources will continue to inspire collaboration and new ideas in the heritage sector for years to come.

Explore the Research in Depth

To complement the dynamic discussions in the recordings, we invite you to explore the newly published factsheets below for all 22 featured projects. These documents provide a detailed, at-a-glance overview of each project’s objectives, key findings, and societal impacts, serving as the perfect companion resource to the session playbacks.

Documents

Archaeology
Architecture
Built Heritage
Changing environments
Climate Change
Digital Heritage
Heritage Management
Sustainable development
Project Factsheets: JPI CH Joint Call on Conservation, Protection & Use
2025 | JPI CH | Pages: 12
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Comment
Project Factsheets: JPI CH Joint Call on Conservation, Protection & Use (2015) ABSTRACT: The call for proposals “Conservation, Protection and Use” was launched to support innovative, transnational, and interdisciplinary research capable of addressing the complex physical and social changes reshaping cultural heritage and the ways communities experience and value it. A key requirement was an implementation-oriented approach, encouraging collaboration not only across diverse academic fields but also with stakeholders and end-users such as cultural organisations, public authorities, community groups, and policy-makers, to ensure that outcomes are practical and widely relevant. Focused primarily on tangible heritage—archaeological, movable, built, and landscape—the call also recognised the inseparable role of intangible and digital heritage in contemporary societies. Funded projects were expected to develop best practices and knowledge-based strategies for daily heritage management as well as for protecting heritage in times of natural or human-made disasters. Ultimately, the call aimed to foster holistic and sustainable frameworks for the study, conservation, management, and use of cultural heritage across multiple scales, structured around four key themes: analysing and modelling change; sustainable protection and enhancement of values; management of heritage at risk; and layered conservation.
Changing environments
Culture
Heritage values - Identity
Project Factsheets: JPI CH Joint Call on Identities & Perspectives: Responding to Societies
2025 | JPI CH | Pages: 8
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Project Factsheets: JPI CH Joint Call on Identities & Perspectives: Responding to Societies (2025) ABSTRACT: This JPI CH joint call emerges from a major transformation within heritage studies, reflecting the field’s shift away from a traditionally nation-centered approach toward more inclusive, transnational, and critically engaged perspectives. While early scholarship in the 1980s framed heritage primarily within national belonging and identity, recent decades have seen the discipline broaden to reconsider what heritage is, whom it serves, and what functions it performs within society. This evolution has been shaped by grassroots activism advocating for marginalized and previously overlooked heritages, as well as by academic developments in cultural studies and postcolonial criticism that foreground issues of race, gender, class, and the need to decolonize collections. The “transnational turn” has further highlighted the interplay of local, national, and transcultural identities, prompting international organisations and heritage institutions to prioritise diversity, co-creation, and the recognition of living and intangible heritage. Technological changes, particularly digitisation, have created new possibilities for access and for reconnecting communities with displaced heritage, while contemporary research on wellbeing, health, and sensory experience is offering fresh insights into how people engage with the past. Responding to this dynamic landscape, the JPICH CHIP call invited innovative and interdisciplinary proposals addressing five broad themes: rethinking the implicit role of heritage in society; new perspectives on its construction; co-creative and community-centred management approaches aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals; inclusive digital access; and the cultural, economic, social, and user impacts of heritage.
Heritage values - Identity
Policies
Sustainable development
Project Factsheets: JPI CH Joint Call on Cultural Heritage, Society and Ethics
2025 | JPI CH | Pages: 8
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Comment
Project Factsheets: JPI CH Joint Call on Cultural Heritage, Society and Ethics (2025) ABSTRACT: This call for research proposals is rooted in a central question: what is cultural heritage, how is it valued, and how does it intersect with ethics—the foundational principles that guide human societies across time? Cultural heritage is inseparable from the ethical frameworks through which communities interpret, preserve, use, and debate it, and as societies face accelerating environmental change, democratic pressures, and evolving social cohesion, there is a pressing need to reconsider the environmental, cultural, social, and economic significance attributed to heritage. This reassessment requires acknowledging multivocality—diverse voices and experiences—and placing ethical reflection at the core of heritage-related decision-making. The call therefore focused on two major themes: the relationship between cultural heritage and economic development, examining how heritage can support sustainable, experience-based economies without compromising its integrity and how its non-utilitarian values can be safeguarded amid increasing commercialisation; and cultural heritage and sustainable strategies, investigating how heritage interacts with democratic values, political contexts, and contested narratives, as well as its potential to foster ethical and sustainable behaviours and policies. Beyond these thematic priorities, the call sought to support high-quality, interdisciplinary, and collaborative research engaging a wide range of stakeholders and encouraging meaningful knowledge exchange. Aligned with DORA principles, it emphasised evaluating research on its intrinsic quality rather than journal metrics. The funded projects involved early-career researchers and delivered diverse outputs—including publications, exhibitions, digital tools, and policy recommendations—demonstrating their contributions to broader debates on cultural heritage, ethics, sustainability, and social cohesion.