Maritime Cultural Heritage: Protection, Conservation, Tourism, and Management

The Fellowship aims to empower mid-career professionals to modernise maritime cultural heritage management in Southeast Asia. The region’s maritime cultural heritage is a non-renewable resource under increasing pressure from industrial development, food-energy production, climate change and other threats. The Fellowship directly addresses AAF’s priority area ‘Maritime and the blue economy’ and communicates strategies for how the protection of maritime cultural heritage can co-exist with and stimulate economic growth in local Southeast-Asian communities through heritage tourism.

We propose a ‘Maritime Cultural Heritage School’ in which state-of-the-art research and best-practice management policies and tools inform professional capacity building, research, and leadership training in sustainable maritime heritage management for the Southeast Asian region. The program will deliver the highest quality training and research in the following key areas of heritage management: development of sustainable heritage tourism; identification and mitigation of threats to heritage; disaster and climate change preparedness; developing conservation management plans; recognising sea rights and Indigenous tenure of seascapes and intertidal/submerged heritage; and developing Indigenous-inclusive management strategies.

The program will build relationships between counterpart management institutions, develop an effective professional network for practitioners and leaders, and facilitate collaboration with Australian partner organisations. A mentoring program will be established linking the Fellows with their Australian counterparts.