Cultural Heritage Futures MSc

Heritage is not simply about preserving the past. Decisions about what we value, protect, interpret and remember help shape the societies and environments of the present and future.

The MSc Cultural Heritage Futures explores these relationships between past, present and future. You will investigate how heritage is created, contested, governed, communicated and transformed, and how it can contribute to addressing contemporary social and environmental challenges. These may include climate change and sustainability, decolonisation, conflict and contested lands, technological transformation, online hostility and hate speech, inequalities, tourism, ocean and coastal change, difficult pasts, and the politics of memory and identity.

The programme takes an interdisciplinary and challenge-driven approach. Rather than considering heritage only as something inherited from the past, you will explore how decisions about heritage influence communities, institutions, landscapes and future generations.

Based in the University of Edinburgh's School of History, Classics and Archaeology, you will study within a School with long-established international expertise in heritage, archaeology and history, while engaging with real-world processes and case studies in heritage policy and practice.

This combination of critical scholarship and applied learning will prepare you to understand heritage not only as an academic field, but also as an area of professional practice, public policy and global action.

What makes Cultural Heritage Futures distinctive?

Many heritage programmes focus primarily on how heritage should be managed or conserved.

Cultural Heritage Futures asks a broader question: What futures are we creating through the ways we understand, use and protect the past?

The programme combines:

• critical heritage studies
• archaeology and historical perspectives
• heritage policy and governance
• global challenges
• digital and data approaches
• sustainability
• interdisciplinary research
• applied heritage practice
• futures-oriented thinking

This combination allows you to approach heritage simultaneously as an academic field, a professional practice and an important part of contemporary social and environmental decision-making.

You will leave the programme not simply knowing more about heritage, but better equipped to question existing practices, undertake independent research, work collaboratively and contribute to how heritage is understood and used in the future.

Questions you might explore

During the programme, you may consider questions such as:

• Who decides what should become heritage, and whose heritage is represented?
• How can heritage organisations respond to climate change and other global challenges?
• How are museums, monuments and archaeological sites being reinterpreted through decolonisation?
• How is artificial intelligence changing how we understand and communicate the past?
• What can be done to prevent the spread of heritage-based hostility online?
• How can heritage education help to create more tolerant futures?
• How can ocean and coastal heritage contribute to sustainable futures?
• How should societies approach difficult, contested or traumatic pasts?
• How do international organisations, governments and communities negotiate heritage?
• What role can heritage play in diplomacy, sustainable development and public policy?
• How can communities participate more directly in documenting, interpreting and governing their heritage, including through the use of digital technologies?
• What might the heritage profession look like in the future?

There are no single answers to these questions. The programme will give you the critical, methodological and professional tools to investigate them and develop your own responses.

Why study Cultural Heritage Futures at Edinburgh?

Study heritage in a School dedicated to understanding the past and its contemporary significance

The School of History, Classics and Archaeology provides a rich intellectual environment for studying heritage. You will learn alongside students and researchers working across archaeology, history and related disciplines, while developing a distinctive specialism in critical and applied heritage studies that draws on a range of methods, from more data-driven approaches to creative and participatory practice.

This environment allows you to connect contemporary heritage questions to specific places, periods and social actors across the world, benefiting from the global scope of heritage, archaeological and historical research in the School. 

Think about heritage differently

The programme has a distinctive futures-oriented approach.

You will consider not only what heritage means today, but also how contemporary decisions about conservation, interpretation, data, policy and participation create different possible futures.

This means asking critical questions about the assumptions underpinning heritage practice and considering how alternative approaches might produce more sustainable, inclusive and socially responsible outcomes.

Connect theory with real-world challenges

The programme is designed around contemporary problems rather than theory alone.

Teaching and assessment will encourage you to apply critical ideas to practical heritage situations, including questions of governance, policy, conservation, communication, digital practice and community engagement.

Case studies from different parts of the world will allow you to examine how heritage challenges vary across political, cultural, environmental and institutional contexts.

Learn from active researchers and heritage practitioners

You will be taught by academics whose research engages directly with contemporary heritage questions, alongside contributions from community leaders, and heritage professionals from external organisations such as:

• The World Monuments Fund
• UNESCO 
• ICOM
• ICCROM
• Historic England

This approach provides opportunities to encounter perspectives from research, policy and professional practice and to understand how decisions about heritage are made beyond the University.

Build your own pathway

Cultural Heritage Futures combines a strong common intellectual foundation with considerable flexibility.

You will take dedicated compulsory courses alongside heritage-focused option courses and, subject to programme requirements and availability, relevant postgraduate courses elsewhere within the School and in other Schools across the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

You can therefore develop a pathway that reflects your interests, whether these lie in archaeology, museums, heritage policy, digital heritage, ocean heritage, difficult heritage, community engagement or other areas.

Develop a substantial project of your own

The programme culminates in the Cultural Heritage Futures Project, giving you the opportunity to investigate a heritage question in depth.

Depending on the nature of your project and subject to approval, this may take the form of a traditional academic dissertation or an equivalent multimodal or practice-based project.

We also offer opportunities to work on projects proposed by our industry partners, under the supervision of our academic staff.