The first edited volume in the field of heritage to conceptualize and contextualize social justice in depth, both theoretically and through practical applications.

In this edited volume, scholars and practitioners working across heritage, museums, galleries, and cultural institutions explore how principles of social justice can be embedded within these spaces. Highlighting intersections between critical heritage studies and urgent global challenges, the book seeks to foster inclusive, community-engaged heritage practices. Applying Nancy Fraser’s theory of three-dimensional justice—redistribution, recognition, and representation—within the context of heritage studies, the authors reflect on global social, cultural, political, and environmental issues through an interdisciplinary heritage-focused approach. 

Veysel Apaydin is associate professor in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education. He is the author of Narrating Heritage. Rights, Abuses and Cultural Resistance and Heritage, Education and Social Justice; and editor of Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage. Kalliopi Fouseki is professor of sustainable heritage management at the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, UCL. She is the author of Heritage Dynamics and the editor of Heritage and Sustainable Urban Transformations: Deep Cities. David Francis is a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Jonathan Gardner is a chancellor’s fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.  He is the author of A Contemporary Archaeology of London’s Mega Events: From the Great Exhibition to London 2012. Sara Perry is associate professor of digital public archaeology at UCL's Institute of Archaeology.

List of figures, tables and boxes
List of contributors
Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: social justice in heritage and the challenges of political, cultural and climate crises
Veysel Apaydin, Kalliopi Fouseki, David Francis, Jonathan Gardner, Sara Perry

Part I: Redistribution

2 Museums, material culture and critical dialogue: equal access through redistribution
Veysel Apaydin

3 Climate justice, heritage and the arts
Colin Sterling

4 Huts as heritage: social justice and the materiality of menstrual exclusion in western Nepal
Stefanie Lotter and Rajya Laxmi Gurung

5 Colonial pasts and botanic futures: narratives of recognition at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the Chelsea Physic Garden
Charlotte Drohan

6 Social media, sport and social justice: the Migration Museum’s Football Moves People campaign
Alice Millar

Part II: Recognition

7 Tracing the authorised science heritage discourse: smallpox stories, coloniality and the co-construction of science and society relationships in museum exhibitions
Emily Dawson

8 ‘A lost gay space’? Recognising LGBTQ+ heritage in a changing sense of place
Tom Butler

9 Exhibition as counternarrative: a grassroots exhibition of Nuosu artists from Liangshan in southwest China
David Francis

10 Creating the conditions for social justice: recognising heritage professionals’ emotions in climate change work
Anna Woodham

11 Performing the egalitarian life: Neolithic Çatalhöyük as a springboard for future thinking
Sara Perry, Katrina Gargett, Sierra McKinney, Veysel Apaydin, Sophia Mirashrafi, Akrivi Katifori

Part III: Representation

12 Living heritage dynamics: engaging with queer counterpublics in London and Sheffield
Catalina Ortiz, Natalia Villamizar Duarte, Joshua Folley and Kalliopi Fouseki

13 Reconstructing home(lands): enshrining South Asian heritage in secular spaces
Ella Patel

14 Heritage for people, not for profit: social justice and the right to the city in Rome
Jilke Golbach

15 Heritage justice reframed: perspectives from the Sardinian wetlands
Magdalena Buchczyk

16 Curating pasts in a breaking world
Dean Sully

17 Epilogue: critical reflections on heritage and social justice
Veysel Apaydin

Index