Lynn Meskell
Lynn Meskell is Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is Richard D. Green Professor of Anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences, Professor in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the Weitzman School of Design, and curator in the Middle East and Asia sections at the Penn Museum. Currently she serves asAD White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (2019-2025). She holds Honorary Professorships at Oxford University and Liverpool University in the UK, Shiv Nadar in India and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Previously Lynn was the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
The project
Title: UNESCO World Heritage @ 50. I will be back in the archives of UNESCO, Paris examining the legacy of the 1972 World Heritage Convention in the context of India and the Middle East, with particular attention to the development of heritage humanitarianism
Keywords: UNESCO World Heritage, institutional ethnography, cultural diplomacy, India, Middle East, atomic archaeology
Selected publications
- 2018 A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage and the Dream of Peace, Oxford University Press: New York.
- 2022 • Atomic archaeology: Italian innovation and American Adventurism, American Anthropologist, 2022: 1-15.
- Rainey and the Russians: Arctic archaeology, ‘Eskimology’ and Cold War cultural diplomacy, Archaeological Dialogues 39: 138-154.
- “Your Mysterious Instruments”: American Devices and Imperial Designs in Cold War Archaeology (with S. LaPorte) Journal of Field Archaeology 47/4: 212-227.
- The World Is Not Enough: New Diplomacy and Dilemmas for the World Heritage Convention at 50 (with Claudia Liuzza) International Journal of Cultural Property, 2022: 1-22.
- UNESCO and Global Governance, Keynote Reflection, in R. Bernecker and N. Franceschini (eds). 50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict and Reconciliation, Springer: Cham. 75-80.
- Saving the World: Fifty Years of the Convention, Conservation, and Collaboration (with Claudia Liuzza) Change over Time, 11/2: 142-161.
