Belonging Through Heritage? (Deborah Sielert)

Since the 2003 UNESCO Convention, cultural heritage policies have promoted diversity and grassroots participation. Deborah Sielert explores how these global discourses do and do not unfold in three small towns in northern Germany, where Portuguese, Dutch, and East Frisian minorities have shaped the cultural sphere since the 1990s - despite the absence of official heritage frameworks. Through a comparative multi-sited study, the research traces how local actors engage with symbolic boundary-making in ethnicised festivals and associations, and how global heritage regimes inform these endeavours. This study offers a fresh sociological lens on the interplay between local sensemaking and the worldmaking power of heritage discourse.

Deborah Sielert earned her PhD in sociology at Leibniz Universität Hannover as part of the project Cultural Heritage as a Resource? , focusing on cultural pluralism in small towns. She previously explored the radical imagination of parent activists in Germany and the Netherlands during her research master s in Gender and Ethnicity at Universiteit Utrecht. Her interests are interdisciplinary and include social theory, critical heritage studies, and feminist theory, particularly around the notion of care. She now applies her experience in research, teaching, and publishing as an Open Access Advisor at Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) in Hannover.