Dr Helle Jørgensen

• PhD - Department of History and Area Studies, Aarhus University (2010)
• Master of Anthropology - Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen (2005)

Cultural heritage has been an enduring interest in my work, which has involved university-based research as well as applied work in the museum sector. My experience after completing my MA in anthropology in 2005 includes a range of project employments with an emphasis on cultural history, where amongst other things I have worked as a curator in a Danish museum, the Museum of Møn.

In 2007-2010 I carried out my PhD project, which investigated the contemporary cross-cultural heritage development in Tranquebar, a former Danish trading colony in South India which has been declared a heritage town by Indian authorities, based on the townscape and buildings which were constructed in the period of Danish rule from 1620 to 1845, after which Tranquebar was sold to the British. My project was part of the Tranquebar Initiative, an interdisciplinary research initiative housed at the National Museum of Denmark, focusing on past and present cultural encounters associated with Tranquebar.

My applied research also includes work as a research assistant at the Center of Museology, Aarhus University. Here, one of my key tasks was to carry out a qualitative research project on barriers and potential for museum use amongst young people in Denmark on behalf of the National Cultural Heritage Agency in 2011.

After completing my PhD project I have continued to be involved in a range of projects related to heritage and colonial history in and around Tranquebar, such as book publications and dissemination on the web, for the National Museum of Denmark as well as in other contexts. My work on behalf of the National Museum of Denmark has also included writing a report with recommendations on the development of heritage and tourism in Tranquebar for the Ministry of Tourism in Tamil Nadu.

My current research is also focused on colonial heritage in India, where I have branched out to investigate the management and representation of the legacy of India’s colonial relations with France, which ceded its Indian territories de facto in 1954; and de jure only in 1962.

Some of my recent and upcoming publications are also based on the interest in World Heritage which I have developed after almost a decade as programme lead on the MA in World Heritage Studies at the University of Birmingham. I am also responsible for entries related to UNESCO on lex.dk (the Great Danish Encyclopedia), and an academic member of the steering group for the World Heritage site Ironbridge Gorge.

Prior to my work as Lecturer in Cultural Heritage for the University of Birmingham in September 2014-September 2024, I have taught across an extensive range of disciplines at the University of Aarhus and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, including anthropology, history, museology, comparative cultural studies and regional studies (both South Asian and European).

As my employment at the School of History and Cultures has terminated and I now have an honorary (i.e. unpaid) research affiliation to the school I am no longer accepting  new PhD projects for supervision on the cultural heritage programme. I am, however, open to paid engagements as external co-supervisor  on projects based elsewhere if they fall within my field of expertise. In particular I am interested in heritage in post/colonial contexts, and World Heritage.

Completed PhD projects:

• Thi Quynh Ngoc Bui: Accommodating Traditions of Hospitality in a Tourist Region: the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
• Malgorzata Trelka: “When the Heritage Came”: World Heritage and local communities through the prism of Ironbridge Gorge
• Coralie Rachel Acheson: Visiting the Industrial Revolution: The Communication of World Heritage Values to Tourists in Ironbridge Gorge
• Aidatul Fadzlin Binti Bakri: Negotiating Identities and ‘Sense of Place’ in a World Heritage City: The Case of George Town, Penang, Malaysia
• Richard Bigambo: Safeguarding Practices for Intangible Cultural Heritage in Tanzania: National vs Local Perspectives
• Hee Joo Kim: Urban Heritage Production in South Korea: A Tale of Two Cities
• Arooj Al Rae: Displaying the Nation: The Role of Museums in the Expression of National Identity in the Sultanate of Oman
• Predencia Dixon: Death of the Nine-Night: Jamaican Heritage and Identity Crisis in Response to Changing Death Rituals
• Ismail Elnour: Local Community Intangible Cultural Heritage Associated with Gebel Elbarkal and Napatan Region Archaeological Sites: Values, Identity, and Ownership Claims
• Michael Allen: Dissonant Modernism: Mass Housing as Architectural Heritage in the United States
• Abdirahman Nuur Mahamed: Heritage Tourism Development in Post-conflict Somaliland: The Politics of Stakeholders in Heritage Tourism and Nation Building in a Country Without International Recognition
• Ximena Lecaros Vial: A Home Away from Home: Heritage, Memory and Identity in Latin American Migrant Communities of Santiago de Chile

Current supervision:

• Lingjun Li: Museum Resilience: The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Independent Museums in the UK
• Xinbei Wang: Architecture, Quasi-Colonialism and Politics: A Micro-History of the British Consulate in Wen-Chow
• Albert Kirchner: Many Nights in the Following Sun: Interpretations of the British Government House in Barrackpore, Calcutta, 1870-1925
• Lorna Keathley: Cades Cove 360-degree Inclusive and Accessible Virtual Tour Project

While I have done applied research focusing on national or more local contexts, notably concerning heritage and museology in Denmark, I have a particular interest in investigating the production of heritage in cross-cultural, transnational and international contexts, especially within the framework of post/colonial relations, with the particular tensions which these relations often imply. I have ample ethnographic fieldwork experience from India, both in the South (Tamil Nadu and Puducherry) and in the North (West Bengal), where I have been doing research on the development of heritage (including tourism and urban development) in post/colonial contexts. I also have experience from ethnographic fieldwork in New Zealand, where I have investigated repatriation of human remains from ethnographic museums to indigenous people. My work over many years as programme lead on a Masters in World Heritage Studies has also sparked my interest for the global phenomenon of World Heritage and the practicalities and politics of its conceptualisation and management, which I have published on more recently.

My research interests are oriented towards identity politics, social memory and perceptions of historicity, and not least towards the encounters and clashes between different concepts and practices related to understandings of heritage and its meaning in the present. This includes negotiations between different agents and their interests in producing and using heritage, for instance in the context of economic development and urbanisation, with its attendant ramifications in policy, daily life and relations ranging from the local to the national and transnational. I am interested in a wide range of practices and the interplays between them, from professional heritage management and research to tourism and everyday uses of sites, objects and phenomena claimed as heritage.

My most enduring research engagement has been with India, on which I have been working since 2007. My research over the last decade has been focused on the Union State Territory of Puducherry (the former French India), and the former European settlements along the Hughli River in West Bengal, notably Chandernagore. In Puducherry I have investigated the representations of French-Indian colonial connections and the associated postcolonial imaginaries and understandings of independence, as well as the management of heritage and tourism in the capital city’s  contemporary process of urban development pressures. In West Bengal I have been involved in a collective interdisciplinary project focused on heritage along the Hughli River corridor, the Hughli River of Cultures project. During earlier research in India I have also investigated the development of the former trading colony Tranquebar as a heritage town and a destination of heritage tourism, both as seen against decades of development plans and in the particular context of responses to the disastrous tsunami which struck the Indian Ocean in 2004. This research was associated with the Tranquebar Initiative of the National Museum of Denmark.

Posts related to academic dissemination and advisory work in heritage management:

• Member of the steering group for the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, UK (2022 – cont.)
• Subject specialist responsible for entries related to UNESCO on lex.dk (the Great Danish Encyclopedia).

Assessment of research applications:

• I am registered on the experts database of the European Commission Research Executive Agency and have participated as expert evaluator in assessments of applications for Horizon2020 funding
• I am a member of the Humanities Research Council UK Peer Review College
• I have served as grant application reviewer for the Marsden Fund, Royal Society of New Zealand

>External examining:

• External examiner, University of Wales Trinity Saint David Prof Doc Heritage, MRes Heritage, MA / Pg Dip / Pg Cert Heritage
• Anthropology at University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University, BA and MA level
• Ethnology, Minority and Gender Studies, and Comparative Cultural Studies at University of Copenhagen, and the Cultural and Language Encounters Study Programme at Roskilde University, MA level
• External examiner for various PhD projects e.g. at UCL and University of Leicester

>Reviews of book proposals done for the following publishers:

• Book proposal reviewer for Routledge
• Book proposal reviewer for Rowman and Littlefield International

Peer reviews done for the following journals:

• Heritage and Society
• International Journal of Heritage Studies
• Annals of Tourism Research
• Hospitality and Society
• Tourist Studies
• Journal of Material Culture
• Archaeologies
• The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice
• History and Anthropology
• Review of Development and Change
• Tidsskriftet Antropologi (Danish: Journal of Anthropology)
• Slagmark – Tidsskrift for idehistorie (Danish journal: Battlefield – Journal for the History of Ideas)
• Nordisk Museologi (Scandinavian journal: Nordic Museology).

Former administrative roles at UoB:

• Programme lead and admissions tutor on the MA programme in World Heritage Studies (on campus and via distance learning, part time and full time (2015-2024) 
• Library representative for the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (2015-2021)
• Staff-student committee liaison officer for the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (2015-2021)

Committee work for the School of History and Cultures:

• Member of the Athena SWAN committee (2016-2020)
• Member of the Equality and Diversity Committee (2020-2024)