Archive 2011 - Academic Directors

Michael Herzfeld, Academic Co-Director of the 2011 Summer Programme, is Professor of Anthropology and Curator of European Ethnology in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. He has written on heritage issues in Greece, Italy, and Thailand.  Among his ten books are A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town (1991) and Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (2009); he has also authored articles on the politics of the past in Thailand and on issues of folklore and politics, intangible heritage, artisanship and the transmission of skill, and the role of archaeology in society.  He is currently working on a book and a film about the Rattanakosin Island conservation project in Bangkok and has made a film about his Rome work (Monti Moments: Men’s Memories in the Heart of Rome, 2007).

Nira Wickramasinghe, Academic Co-Director of the 2011 Summer  Programme, is Professor/Chair of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University. Her work that uses Sri Lanka as an archive, explores the notion of authenticity in the construction of national identities in colonized and postcolonial societies through a foray into artefacts and everyday things. Her  most recent books include: Sri Lanka in the Modern Age. A History of contested identities (C.Hurst: London and University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2006); Dressing the Colonized Body. Politics Clothing and Identity in Colonial Sri Lanka (Orient Longman; New Delhi 2003) (translated into French by Karthala presse in 2006); Civil Society in Sri Lanka. New Circles of Power (Sage Publ. 2001).She is actively involved in initiatives that promote shared heritage in multi-ethnic societies.