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Heritage and Festival Entanglements: Book Presentation and Roundtable

The book presentation bringing together the three volumes of the Heritage Insights series, developed by Florence Graezer Bideau (EPFL) and Peter Bille Larsen (Université de Genève) through a series of workshops and discussions held at Istituto Svizzero over the past years.

The series explores contemporary heritage through questions of governance, creativity, visibility, politics and agency. The first volume, Governing Heritage and Creativity: Frictions, Avenues, and Questions, examines the tensions between heritage governance, creativity and change, while the second, Hidden Heritage, addresses silenced, overlooked, and concealed forms of heritage and the politics of making them visible.

The event marks the publication of the third volume, Heritage and Festival Entanglements, which explores the growing phenomenon of heritage festivals, from official events to grassroots initiatives across the world. Bringing together diverse international case studies, the book examines festivals as spaces where heritage-making, identity, affect, politics and cultural economies intersect. It asks how festivals shape what becomes visible as heritage, who participates in its production, and how meanings and practices shift across different cultural contexts.

The presentation of the volume will be followed by a roundtable discussion with the editors and contributors, reflecting on the questions raised by the book and on the broader development of critical heritage studies through the Heritage Insights series.