Since the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003, a growing amount of research has been undertaken on its origins, purposes, uses, implementation, and impacts. While some of this research is well known and widely disseminated, some of it remains difficult to locate, and there is currently no tool to easily search this body of work. It is also difficult to identify relevant research in different languages.
What are the aims of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention Research Bibliography?
The Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention Research Bibliography provides an open-access, searchable interface for bibliographic records of research relating to the Convention, as well as a limited-access resource providing full-text articles for the use of the researchers involved in the project, including the editorial group and reviewers, and UNESCO Secretariat. This Bibliography is intended to foster better communication among researchers working in this field, broadly defined. It may enhance dissemination of ICH-related research within the academic community and focus future research activity on areas of particular need.
The project also intends to improve access to and use of research for States Parties to the Convention, civil society actors and UNESCO Secretariat. This may assist in implementing the Convention, and assessing its impact at international, regional and national levels.
How will the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention Research Bibliography work?
Researchers will be invited to submit new bibliographic references, in any language, for inclusion in the bibliography. A volunteer team of reviewers (researchers in the field) will assess the suitability of new entries for the bibliography against the statement of scope below, and index them. A volunteer editorial group (comprising 4 key experts in the field globally) appoints reviewers and oversees their work. The editorial group will also periodically review the scope and functioning of the project. The UNESCO Secretariat provides basic technical support for the management of the system. To ensure independence of the editorial group in conducting this work, the UNESCO Secretariat will not determine what research is included in the database and does not bear any responsibility for its contents. The full set of data may be exported at a later stage to ensure the continuity of the project, should a decision be made to host it in an academic or other institution.
What is the scope of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention Research Bibliography ?
The 2003 Convention Research Bibliography focusses on research relating to the Convention and its implementation while encompassing a wide range of perspectives and approaches. Research included on the database should relate to the origins, purposes, uses, implementation, and impacts of the Convention. For example, an account of the history and practice of a specific music or dance element might not be included, unless it relates to the framing of the element as ICH, its inclusion or exclusion from an inventory of ICH under the Convention, and so on. More general analyses of the origins and uses of the Convention by a variety of stakeholders, whether critical or otherwise, would also be included on the database. This might include research on the relationship between the Convention and sustainable development, gender, migration, education, and cultural or heritage work at international, regional and national levels. The intention is to include research from numerous regions and contexts, disseminated in a variety of different forms and languages, covering a wide range of topics, different domains of ICH, and coming from diverse disciplinary or analytical perspectives. We hope to include both published academic research as well as ‘grey literature’ such as unpublished research reports from civil society, NGOs or government agencies. This would not include documents such as the Periodic Reports prepared by States Parties for the Committee, which are stored and indexed elsewhere.
We hope that you will be able to contribute to this project by adding relevant bibliographic references. Please, do not hesitate to disseminate this information among your colleagues and other potential contributors.
Yours faithfully,
Chiara Bortolotto
Harriet Deacon
Cristina Amescua
Misako Ohnuki
Coordinators of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention Research Bibliography
Email:
ICHCRB@gmail.com
Coordinators-ICHCRB@lists.unesco.org