The Research problem
Over 120 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, and this number is expected to continue rising. Displaced people often face significant barriers to maintaining and passing on their intangible cultural practices, including oral traditions, performing arts, traditional crafts, rituals, and festive events. These challenges can add to the challenges of displacement: cultural practices play a vital role in wellbeing, identity, and social connection. When such practices are disrupted, international efforts to safeguard at-risk intangible cultural heritage are also undermined.
This project aims to better understand how displaced people can—and do—sustain intangible cultural practices throughout the experience of forced displacement. It brings together a transdisciplinary team of over 25 WUN researchers, other academic experts, non-governmental partners, and people with lived experience of displacement, to identify and expand pathways for sustaining intangible culture in contexts of forced displacement. In this way, the project supports global efforts to create safer, more equitable futures for displaced people and their host societies.
Research Design
Led by Griffith University (Australia), this project brings together WUN institutions from the Global South (Ghana, Mexico, Brazil) and the Global North (Australia, Canada, the Netherlands). The two partner organisations — UNESCO’s ICH NGO Forum and Arts for Refugees in Transition — will help ensure the project’s relevance and impact across policy and practice.
The project will undertake a stocktake of existing knowledge, alongside interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration, to generate expert insights for research, policy, and practice. Local working groups in Mexico, the United States, and Ghana will develop and explore sub-projects. Planned outputs include an international working symposium, a proposal for a journal special issue, and a set of recommendations and resources to support cultural sustainability in contexts of forced displacement. A WUN Cultural Sustainability and Forced Displacement Research Network will be established to continue this work into the future.
Project Objectives
Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement has three key aims:
- to map existing knowledge about the main challenges involved in practising, passing on, and sustaining cultural practices in situations of forced displacement, and to identify possible solutions;
- to identify practical ways for displaced individuals and groups of people to sustain their cultural practices, and for host societies, governments, civil society organisations, researchers, and others to support those cultural practices and their human bearers; and
- to develop and share resources that inform research, policy, and practical initiatives aimed at supporting cultural sustainability in contexts of forced displacement.
WUN is providing funding to support this work, including the activities of local working groups, the international working symposium, and the dissemination of project outcomes.