Bringing Together Areas of Critical Heritage, Performativity, & Global Media
A professor of media and communications at Saint Paul University, my research makes a number of interventions to international public history and critical heritage studies. In 2006, my book, Salsa and Its Transnational Moves (Rowman and Littlefield Inc.), demonstrated my interests in performance and performativity, themes that continue to animate my research. More recently, I have investigated the relationships between UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage practices, performance, and social media. This work includes a 2014 study published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies on the whirling dervish ceremony or Mevlevi Sema ceremony of Turkey entitled, “Between Narratives and Lists: Performing Digital Intangible Heritage through Global Media.” My next research project examines the dynamics of online heritage, public history and social media. I also work on museums objects and social media, such as my recent co-authored open access book Museum Digitisations and Emerging Curatorial Agencies Online: Vikings in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Participating in International Heritage Discussions
I am an active participant in professional heritage meetings around the world. In 2021, I presented, “Digital Mobilization and Heritage” at a G20 cultural ministerial thematic webinar entitled “Human Capital – The Driver of Culture-Led Regeneration,” and in 2019, I was invited by the European Union Commission to give a keynote speech entitled “Intangible Cultural Heritage and Digitization” at the European Union Commission conference, “Platforms on the Future of Cultural Heritage: A Problem-Solving Approach – Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age.”