Call for Papers | T4EU Common European Heritage Week
Heritage Future(s) / Future Heritage(s): On the Threshold of Change
Apply by 4 January 2025
16 to 20 March 2026 | Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal
About the Call
The Call for Papers for EPoCH 2026 Heritage Future(s) / Future Heritage(s): On the Threshold of Change is now open, and students, professors, and researchers can apply until 4 January 2025, with author notifications scheduled for 20 January 2026.
The call for papers is open to papers that critically and creatively address these themes in various contexts, methodologies, and disciplines, examples of which include:
- Challenging heritage: borders, margins, and new epistemologies.
- Challenging conservation-restoration: new paths, tools, and concepts; a deontology of the immaterial.
- Heritage in its multiple relations with climate change.
- Over-tourism in heritage sites and new approaches to tourism, including niche, sustainable, green, and creative tourism.
- Sustainable solutions for heritage preservation and artistic practices: new materials, technologies, and analytics. Nature-based, community knowledge, and participatory strategies as bases for innovative solutions.
- Technologies for digitalization, modeling, and impact mitigation. Data Science and AI—potential uses in heritage protection and creation.
Click here to learn more and apply. For more information download a dedicated pdf file (348 KB), or contact t4eu@ucp.pt
About the Event
From 16 to 20 March 2026, Universidade Católica Portuguesa will host the T4EU Common European Heritage Week in Porto, Portugal. Under the topic HERITAGE FUTURE(S) / FUTURE HERITAGE(S): ON THE THRESHOLD OF CHANGE, the Transform4Europe Common European Heritage Week will bring together scholars, practitioners and students for an intensive programme of formative activities, including workshops, public lectures, a roundtable and a scientific conference.
Integrated in this week, the Annual T4EU Sustainable Heritage Conference will take place from 18 to 20 March. This important conference will be jointly organized with EPoCH2026 – the third edition of the international annual conference of the Heritage and Conservation-Restoration research area of CITAR, Católica, offering a unique platform to explore critical reflections and experimental practices in conservation-restoration and heritage studies within the European context.
The central theme invites us to consider the future(s) of heritage and the heritage(s) of the future: How will our actions today shape our shared tomorrow? What new responsibilities arise as we face rapid ecological, technological, and social transformations? Are our decisions ensuring the sustainability of heritage ecosystems?
From material care to digital memory, from endangered traditions to emerging sustainable solutions and cultural forms, we will be challenged to critically reflect on the evolving landscapes and to imagine new configurations of practice, ethics, and responsibility – on the threshold of change.
The week will take place as part of a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP), for which students across the T4EU Alliance will be able to apply and will feature Cornelius Holtorf, Linnaeus University, and Paulo Lourenço, University of Minho, as keynote speakers.
EPoCH 2026 Closing Visit and Talk – Museu das Convergências
20 March, Friday, 11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Registration required: Sign up here | School of Arts
Collaboration: Museu das Convergências (C.M. Porto), Direção das Convergências, Ágora – Cultura e Desporto do Porto, E.M.
Museu das Convergências is a new cultural facility in the city of Porto, located in the former municipal slaughterhouse, which is currently being rehabilitated for cultural purposes. It is an art museum dedicated to the study and exhibition of cultural and artistic objects related to processes of transculturality in art and connected art histories, emerging from human mobility and the exchange of knowledge between cultures. The first temporary exhibition, “Flux – Objects. People. Places”, will take place outside the museum space, at the former Porto Customs House – Alfândega do Porto. The visit will conclude with a conversation between Rui Oliveira Lopes, Director of the museum, and Roberta Altin, from the Department of Humanities at the University of Trieste, moderated by Laura Castro.
