Join Icon Scotland for an online talk and Q&A by Marina Herriges.
Marina is a textile and objects conservator and researcher who has worked with international organisations and cultural heritage institutions across Europe, the United Kingdom, and Brazil, gaining experience in diverse cultural contexts.
She is a doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow, where she explores how conservation can move away from colonial practices by valuing local knowledge, shared decision-making, and long-term, situated and ethical relationships.
This presentation draws on Marina’s ongoing doctoral research, which explores what happens when heritage conservation is approached in a way that situates us within the process itself.
Drawing on fieldwork conducted in ecomuseums in Scotland and Brazil, the talk considers more flexible, community-based approaches to understanding heritage as plural and diverse. In this context, ecomuseums are understood as spaces where heritage is not only protected but also continually reshaped through everyday practices and relationships.
Conservation, therefore, becomes less about preserving objects, and more about caring for the connections between people, land, places, and materials.
Overall, the talk presents heritage and conservation as living and shared, and proposes more inclusive, plural, and sustainable ways of caring for heritage.
Marina is also a visiting lecturer for the MPhil in Textile Conservation and the Managing Art & Cultural Heritage in Global Markets programme at the University of Glasgow, and she holds a position as a researcher at the Institute of Conservation, where she examines how to support conservation practice in the UK by enabling deeper analysis of areas most vulnerable to skills shortages.
