CIE - Centre for International Heritage Activities
Centrum voor Internationale Erfgoedactiviteiten
CIE is an internationally orientated organization which strives to inspire and foster co-creative heritage activities and research across the globe. Our work is focused on creating platforms for discussing the multi-layered nature of heritage, and on practical and academic approaches towards community involvement in their heritage. Our Mission is to facilitate multidisciplinary cultural heritage projects, to encourage and develop skills and capacities, and to move beyond the Eurocentric origins of the heritage industry. We aim to serve as a catalyst for cultural heritage development worldwide.
Welcome
Signature ProgramsÂ
CIE News
Winter 2025
Manifest:IO
In February 2025, CIE founder Robert Parthesius and program head Alia Yunis delivered the keynote address at the third edition of Manifest:IO in Berlin, discussing the role of heritage and the arts, particularly as we move into electronic and AI art. CIE was also one of the co-sponsors of the two-day event which brought together heritage-driven artists from around the world.
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Fall 2024
ICOM conference Dubai
In November, program head Alia Yunis was one of the invited speakers to the opening day of the ICOM Symposium in Dubai. She spoke about the role of heritage in youth education. Other invited speakers include Sultan Al Qassemi and Pablo Guayasamin of UNESCO’s Virtual Museum of Lost Objects.
Summer 2024
UNESCO AWARD
The HeritageLab platform was one of 10 recipients of the 2024 Award for World Heritage Education Innovative Cases given by the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for Asia and the Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO (WHITRAP under the auspices of UNESCO. The award was announced on July 23 at the 46th Session of UNESCO World Heritage Committee, held in New Delhi year. Alia Yunis and Salama Al Faheem accepted the award on behalf of HeritageLab.
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Signature Programs
CIE Events
Spring 2025
Climate Cartographies: Glitch Course in Dubai
CIE Director of Programs Alia Yunis presentes at the Climate Cartographies: Glitch course organised by the AA Visiting School 25 April 2025–3 May 2025.
The course examines the intersection of climate change and heritage, while also considering innovative ways of representing these themes through the medium of sound. In the past, human settlements were primarily shaped by geographical terrains; today, however, they are predominantly defined by borders. A new conversation has arisen around the challenges posed by border regimes and restrictions on movement, especially in the face of environmental disasters. Valuable insights can be gained from places where border controls are temporarily lifted—areas that exist as anomalies within the modern nation-state system.
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Winter 2025
Book Launch: (RE) EMERGING PASTS
In February, CIE celebrated the release of Future Stories in the Global Heritage Industry (Routledge 2025) with an online panel with the authors and editors in a four-year long CIE project. Written by an interdisciplinary group of emerging scholars and heritage professionals connected to these sites through their own heritage, this volume considers how a community can engage with a site’s globalized importance while retaining its own sense of history. Here is the full conversation.
Fall 2024
Global Heritage Symposium
Networked Heritage –
Collaborative Strategies
for Global Research
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​The symposium “Networked Heritage – Collaborative Strategies for Global Research” offers an international platform for the exchange of research results and ideas. The focus is on promoting global collaborations that advance research in the areas of cultural heritage, digital networking and collaborative strategies. In particular, the use of the collaboration platform “Heritage Universe” will be discussed, which was developed over the last two years by the international team HeritageLab.Center.
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FH Münster University of Applied Sciences 
Technology Campus Steinfurt 
Creative Technologies Lab, E-015 
Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024
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Summer 2024
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Alia Yunis presented at 23 July the HeritageLab platform at the 2024 Awards for World Heritage Education Innovative Cases, by the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for Asia and the Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO (WHITRAP). A side event at the UNESCO 46th session of the World Heritage Committee, New Delhi, India.
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CIE launched the HeritageLab platform in collaboration with international partners and heritage communities. The HeritageLab for academics, artists and heritage professionals who seek to give voice to forgotten and neglected narratives, connect heritage landscapes across oceans and seas, and share with marginalized communities the skills that empower them to unlock, document and celebrate their heritage and collective memory.
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Spring 2024
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Conference One Ocean | One Heritage, 29 April-1May, Abu Dhabi
Heritage and the ocean are deeply intwined in coastal communities across the globe. The way our ancestors were affected and adapted to changes in climate is documented in both the cultural memory and the material traces of the past. Looking to the past for guidance and reflecting on the outcomes of COP 28, the Ocean Decade Conference, and the passing of the High Seas Treaty last March, brings together ocean heritage scholars, policymakers, artists, and practitioners with the goal of fostering interdisciplinary “heritage future” projects that support and empower local communities.
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Winter 2023
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"he COP roundtable centered on leveraging insights from underwater cultural heritage to understand past environmental conditions and devising ways to shield humanity's treasures from the perils of climate change. This event was a collaborative effort between UNESCO Paris and Cairo, Scripps Institute, NYU Abu Dhabi, the Center for International Heritage Activities (CIE), and the Ocean Decade Heritage Network (ODHN), aligning with COP 28 goals and Sustainable Development Goals 6, 11.4, 13, and 14.
Main Themes of Collaboration
