The University of Pretoria (UP), in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Yale’s Global Cultural Heritage Initiatives and the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, will be hosting a major international conference, with a unique focus on the benefits of both wildlife and heritage conservation.

Members of the UP community and general public are invited to attend a series of collaborative talks and events ahead of the conference, aimed at fostering understanding of the confluence of these spheres of conservation, preservation, and protection of the environmental and cultural heritage of the world.  

The conference aims to develop academic and professional partnerships through a network of individuals and organisations who resolve to protect the world’s heritage. It’s hoped that sharing expertise across a variety of disciplines can help combat the global threat to heritage.

The speakers will highlight the value of the two parallel branches of conservation – wildlife and heritage – demonstrating that through their adoption, a successful sustainable development on national and international level can be achieved.

The conference seeks to highlight the impact of environmental and cultural heritage loss on societies, and the positive role that conservation can play in both these spheres. The conference aims to look at a cross-disciplinary approach to take a holistic view of protecting heritage, whether cultural or environmental. It will also reflect on experiences in conservation, both cultural and environmental, within a wider African context, and also examine the value of wildlife and heritage conservation during recovery from conflict or crisis.

The Faculty of Humanities at UP invites the public to attend open events as listed below, ahead of the conference. Parallel to the conference, two art exhibitions, curated by Gerhard de Kamper (Department of UP Arts) and Dr Johan Thom (Department of Visual Arts) will highlight modern San art of the 1980s and 1990s and works by UP students. The exhibitions will be hosted in the Edoardo Villa Museum, Old Merensky Library, University of Pretoria.

The events open to the public are:

Monday 15 October

Public lecture by Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman (King’s College, London) broadly on the topic of The Future of Grand Strategy, Plant Science Auditorium, University of Pretoria, 17.00 for 17.30 – 19.00. This ties in with UP’s research theme on peace and conflict in Africa.  

Tuesday 16 October

The Art, Science and Politics of Conservation: Crisis and Opportunities, 13:45 – 16:00 at the Library Auditorium