Director, Cambridge Heritage Research Centre

Associate Professor in Heritage and the Politics of the Past, Department of Archaeology

Dr Dacia Viejo Rose's research interests lie in the nexus between cultural heritage and the political uses of the past. At the moment, her work focuses on how cultural heritage can be a vector for violence both as a target and instrument - including dynamics threat, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and risk. She is especially interested in how cultural heritage is used, and abused, during armed conflicts to divide, exclude, and intimidate. The motivation behind this line of questioning is to try and discover potential mechanisms for ‘disarming’ heritage so that it can be a tool for constructive dialogue, dignity, and respect. More recently, she has been working on assessing the harm done by attacks on cultural heritage and how a nuanced understanding of this might inform measures of repair. This line of research has led her to investigate recent developments at the International Criminal Court and work by the Trust Fund for Victims.

Coming out of, and feeding into, this main line of my research are others such as trying to understand how developments in the neuroscience of memory might be applied to heritage studies, heritage ecologies, and how our perception of risk informs our valuation of heritage.

She regularly collaborate with NGOs and international organisations on matters of cultural heritage, its uses and interpretation, especially as they relate to conflict and humanitarian interventions.