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The Effects of Climate Change on Cultural Heritage

Vak
2025-2026

Please note: This course description is provisional and still subject to changes.

Admission requirements

Description

This seminar will be an introduction to the direct and indirect effects of climate change on cultural heritage sites at various scales in the 21st century. You will be exploring the consequences of these events (sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and drought among others) on cultural heritage such as loss and damage to livelihoods, land, water resources, materials, and values and traditions. How can we detect these adverse changes on cultural heritage sites and communities living in their surroundings? How do these changes influence cultural heritage management? What resilient lessons can we learn from cultural heritage?

These questions will be addressed in lectures through the presentation of global examples, discussions in small groups and hands-on projects in which you will investigate a heritage asset of your choice. There is no geographical limitation for the selection of your case. After an introduction to the topic, you will start your group project which will result in developing a portfolio and a final presentation. These two assignments will introduce your selected site, its challenges, and its resilience in order to come up with adaptive solutions. Weekly group discussions will allow peer feedback to develop your portfolio and final presentation.

You will learn how to analyse a cultural heritage site with several challenges, including climate change, at site, local, and urban scales and with a holistic view by combining geographical, historical, architectural, and heritage survey to apply in your portfolio.

Course objectives

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

  • Understand the effects of climate change on cultural heritage assets;

  • Analyse the challenges of safeguarding a particular cultural heritage asset under the changing climate;

  • Identify the resilience of a particular cultural heritage asset under the changing climate;

  • Develop a portfolio for activating resilient features of a particular cultural heritage asset;

  • Develop a research aim, questions, methodology, analysis, and results on climate resilience.

Timetable

Course schedule details can be found in MyTimetable.
Log in with your ULCN account, and add this course using the 'Add timetable' button.

Mode of instruction

This seminar includes

  • Seminar lectures;

  • Group discussions;

  • Group presentations.

Assessment method

  • Portfolio (70%);

  • Final presentation (20%);

  • Oral participation (10%).

Assessment deadlines

The dates of exams and retakes can be found in MyTimetable. The deadlines of papers, essays and assignments are communicated through Brightspace.

Reading list

The reading list will be available on Brightspace.

Registration

Registration start dates for the BA2 seminars differ from the registration dates of the regular courses.

Registration will take place with the use of forms. These will be e-mailed by the Administration Office to all BA2 students at the beginning of March.

Contact

For more information about this course, please contact Dr. Gül Aktürk Hauser.

Remarks

Compulsory attendance. Attendance will be administrated by each lecturer. Students can miss no more than one class.