UNC Global Research Institute Fellows to Convene Heritage Economics Workshop at the 10th World Archaeological Congress

Two Fellows, Dr. Darius Arya and Brent Lane, of the UNC Global Research Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are convening a workshop on Heritage Economics at the upcoming July 2025 meeting of the World Archaeological Congress in Darwin, Australia. The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) is a not-for-profit organization and forum for discussion for anyone who is concerned with the study of the past. People from more than 70 countries participate in WAC Congresses. WAC seeks to promote interest in the past in all countries, to encourage the development of regionally-based histories and to foster international academic interaction. Its aims are based on the need to make archaeological studies relevant to the wider community.

WAC, which holds an international Congress every four years, is convening for the 1oth time in Darwin, Australia from 22-28 June 2025. It will be hosted by Flinders University in partnership with the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University. WAC-10 is an opportunity to collaborate with diverse colleagues and friends from around the globe and contribute to global policy making. A cultural program will run parallel to the academic program to showcase the diversity and richness of Indigenous Australian cultures, providing an opportunity to learn directly from Aboriginal teachers.

Heritage Economics Workshop

As part of the Congress, Dr. Darius Arya and Brent Lane, Fellows of UNC Global Research Institute, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are Co-convenors of a Workshop session on Heritage Economics entitled “Economic Information in Support of Heritage Research, Conservation and Communication”. The intersection of archaeology and cultural heritage with the field of economics can at times seems more like a collision in which respective goals and values conflict, often to their detriment. However, it is also common that economic information can support archaeological research, conservation, and communication when used to elicit a broad base of public and private support and stewardship through the identification and elucidation of otherwise unrecognized shared interests.

This Heritage Economics workshop will bring together an international spectrum of archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals who have demonstrated the means and value of “heritage economics” in mobilizing and maintaining stakeholder and host community support. Discussants at the workshop will speak to the variety of ways they have used economic information in their archaeological and cultural heritage conservation efforts. In particular, discussants will describe any evolution in how, and to whom, they have learned to persuasively communicate economic benefits to targeted stakeholders – CEOs to host communities – to elicit stewardship support.