Today, history, religion and culture shape international affairs in complex and consequential ways. Sitting at the intersection of these three, cultural heritage speaks not only to our efforts to preserve and retain connections to the past, but also how history should inform our futures. Across the world, societies look to heritage to navigate the social and physical transformations that modern life brings. In Asia interest and investment in heritage has thus boomed in recent decades. Today, however, cultural heritage is subject to significant change through transformative forces that scholars, governments and cultural institutions are struggling to understand. Cultural heritage is now a feature of geopolitics, the adoption of digital technologies, and the climate crisis; all of which complicate those more familiar questions about its role as a vector of identity, social cohesion and productive inter-cultural relations. As China and India mobilise civilisational pasts to forge imaginaries about the future we enter a new era of geocultural competition and collaboration. China, for example, has created numerous virtual reality depictions of the Silk Roads to reframe Asian history, with such technologies used as soft power tools in the Belt and Road Initiative. This project addresses such developments, highlighting the challenges and opportunities facing Singapore and Southeast Asia. The project brings together experts from the humanities, computing studies and the social sciences to produce new, field defining scholarship and platforms of knowledge exchange between academia and institutions that see cultural heritage as a productive means for promoting societal cohesion within and across borders, and the values of internationalism and international diplomacy. It is oriented by the concept of heritage diplomacy, and innovation comes from integrating two distinct ways of approaching this term.

PI & Co-PIs: Tim Winter, Maitrii Aung-Thwin, Hamzah Muzaini & Banu Khan
Collaborators: Bhojan Anand, Cheng Nien Yuan, Jack Meng-Tat Chia, Grincheva Natalia, Jungpil Hahn, Priya Maholay-Jaradi, Sumit Mandal, Ng Teck Khim, Rani Singh & Yang Yang

Funding Agency: Ministry of Education Social Science and Humanities Research Thematic Grant
Project Duration: 25 December 2025 – 24 December 2030