Executive Committee

Melissa F. Baird, President

Melissa Baird is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University (USA). A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA), she earned both MS and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Oregon. She was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Stanford University - sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Stanford Archaeology Center, and the Woods Institute for the Environment. Her research focuses on the politics of heritage in extractive zones and, more recently, connecting anthropological tools and methods to address environmental and societal challenges. She is the author of Critical Theory and the Anthropology of Heritage Landscapes (2017), which drew on over a decade of fieldwork to investigate the sociopolitical contexts of landscapes as heritage.

Jessica Mace, Secretariat Officer

Jessica Mace, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Canadian Architecture and Landscapes in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She is an art and architectural historian and, since 2015, has been the Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada. Her current research interests involve industrial heritage, including the heritage of company towns in Canada and the very concepts of heritage. She is the co-author of the book Identity on the land: Company towns in Canada (Patrimonium, 2020) and co-editor of Les communautés patrimoniales | Heritage Communities (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2019). Mace has also been the co-organizer of two International Conferences of Young Researchers in Heritage (2017 and 2019) and was a member of the executive organizing committee for the ACHS 2016 conference in Montreal.

Myriam Joannette, Vice-President | Conferences and Events

Myriam Joannette is a Ph.D. student in urban studies in the joint program of the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS) and lecturer at UQAM. She works mainly on the relationship between the promotion of heritage tourism and local development. Professionally, she works with many communities in Quebec, Canada, to develop cultural and heritage projects. She was the co-organizer of the Twelfth International Conference of Young Researchers in Heritage, held in Montreal in 2017. In addition, she was a member of the executive organizing committee for the ACHS 2016 conference in Montreal and the 2021 Conference of the International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH 2021). She is also co-editor of Les communautés patrimoniales | Heritage Communities (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2019).

Tokie Laotan Brown, Vice-President | Chapters

Tokie is an associate member of the International Network of Traditional Building Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU), the Construction Industry of Builders (CIOB) in Ireland, Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologist (CIAT) UK, and the UK-Green Building Council. A contributing Member of the ISCCL and represents Nigeria and Ireland on ICOMOS-IFLA. Tokie also works as an indigenous architect and Cultural Economist with Merging Ecologies. Founder and women-led, Tea Group Ltd maintains a bespoke sustainable and indigenous heritage-infused design development solutions.  Women Fund Homes UK and Ireland. A Joint Ph.D. research in Economics and Techniques in the Conservation of Architectural and Environmental Heritage with the University of Nova Gorica and Universita Iuav di Venezia in Italy. 

Plácido González Martinez, Vice-President | Communications

EU representative for GDPR purposes

Ph.D. Architect and Urban Planner, Professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University in Shanghai, and Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Universities (Eastern Scholar). He is the Executive Editor of the journal Built Heritage, co-published by Springer Nature and Tongji University Press. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Iberian Docomomo Foundation, a founding member of the collective research GAMUC studying Spanish colonial architecture and urbanism in Africa, and a former member of the Advisory Board of the Spanish National Plan for the Conservation of 20th Century Heritage, which he drafted in 2014. Since he moved to Shanghai in 2016, his research interests have extended to the challenges of built heritage conservation in China in the framework of globalization. He has researched and published extensively on built heritage conservation and modern architectural history. His works include the book In Light of Hilberseimer (awarded the 1st Prize for Research of the 2018 Spanish Architecture Biennale) and articles in journals like Cities, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of Urbanism, Space, and Polity, Journal of Urban Design and Docomomo International Journal.

Bryony Onciul, Vice-President | Membership

I am an Associate Professor of Museology and Heritage Studies at the University of Exeter. I am Chair of the Heritage Strategy Group for the University. In addition, I founded the UK Chapter of ACHS.

I believe in the need to decentre Eurocentric ideas and move to a post-Western understanding of heritage that supports and learns from indigenisation and is inclusive of diversity. The ACHS has a vital role in revolutionising how heritage is perceived by government bodies, academics, professionals, and the public. It marks a paradigm shift that embeds international, future-facing, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and politically aware work into heritage studies whilst being inclusive and attentive to heritage practitioners and communities. Innovation in thinking and understanding initiated through ACHS must reflect and support innovation in practice to address the critical challenges of our time, including climate change, conflict, pandemics, decolonisation, migration, global economic shifts, and transitional justice. I specialise in Indigenous heritage, (post)colonial history, community engagement, the role of heritage in transitional justice, and approaches to managing heritage in times of accelerated climate change. I am the author of Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice: Decolonizing Engagement (Routledge 2015).

Chiara Bonacchi

Dr. Chiara Bonacchi is Senior Lecturer in Heritage at the University of Stirling, UK. As Executive Officer, she is focused on developing reflexivity and collaborations in digital applications for heritage interpretation, management, and research. Her recent work has concentrated on advancing current knowledge and understanding of digital heritage research's ethics, practice, and epistemologies in a world of big data. She advocates for applying data-intensive methods in heritage studies, which, combined with qualitative approaches, can help address and respond to real-world social challenges and dialogue with policy effectively. She aims to support ACHS by drawing on her international network in academia, cultural policy, and heritage practice. 

Marisa Angell Brown

Marisa Angell Brown is the Associate Director of the Center for Complexity at Rhode Island School of Design. She is a cultural historian, critic, and curator who is an active speaker and writer on social and racial justice themes and public space/design/art informed by questions about power, civic and community engagement, history, and the future. Before joining RISD, Brown was the Assistant Director for Programs and an Adjunct Lecturer at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University, where she managed the Center's public programs and community partnerships and taught courses in public history and critical heritage studies. Her writing has appeared in Places Journal, Perspecta, Buildings, and Landscapes, Art New England, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and her exhibitions and installations have been covered by Metropolis, Architectural Record, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Rhode Island Public Radio. She has a doctorate in the History of Art from Yale University, a master's degree in History from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor's degree in Religion from Princeton University.

Duane Jethro

Duane Jethro is a Lecturer in the Department of African Studies and Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. He specialises in analyzing the cultural construction of heritage and contested public cultures.

A graduate of Utrecht University, he was a Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for Curating the Archive at the University of Cape Town between 2020 and 2022 and pursued a research project that takes a multiperspectival approach to the loss and salvage of the University of Cape Town Jagger Library and its collections after a devastating fire in April 2021. He was co-curator (with Michaelis Galleries curator Jade Nair) of the Jagger Library Memorial Exhibition in April 2022, and co-organised a symposium, After the Fire: loss, archive and African Studies with Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative postdoctoral research fellow Alirio Karina.

Between 2019 and 2020 he worked as a researcher at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage, CARMAH, at the Humboldt University in Berlin, which was founded and directed by Professor Sharon Macdonald. And he is an Associate Research Fellow at the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town.

He has held a Alexander von Humboldt Georg Foster Post doctoral research fellowship (2017-19), and serves as ambassador scientist for the Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Fellowship for South Africa. From 2023, he serves on the executive board of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies. He has published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Material Religion, African Diaspora and Tourist Studies. He is an editor of the journal Material Religion and serves on the editorial board of the journal Museums and Social Issues. His book Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Aesthetics of Power is published by Bloomsbury Academic.

Alexandra Dellios

Alexandra Dellios is an oral and public historian in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. Her research considers the public and oral history of migrant and refugee communities in Australia and their experiences of settlement and working and family life. She has published on child migration, popular representations of multiculturalism, immigration centres and hostels, and public history practices and cultural heritage management in Australia. She is the author of Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (Melbourne University Publishing: 2017), editor of Memory and Family in Australian Refugee Histories (Routledge: 2019), and co-editor of Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage: Beyond and Between Borders (Routledge: 2020). She is Chair of the editorial board for Studies in Oral History and a founding member of the Australian Migration History Network. 

Ali Mozaffari

Fellow of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and Senior Research Fellow with the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University

Ali Mozaffari, PhD, is Senior Fellow with the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Australia. His current research interests include geopolitics of the past, culture and the built environment with a specific focus on West Asia. His publications include Heritage Movements in Asia: Cultural HeritageActivism, Politics, and Identity (edited volume with Tod Jones, Berghahn 2020),Development, architecture and the formation of heritage in late-twentieth century Iran: A vital past (Manchester University Press 2020),World Heritage in Iran; Perspectives on Pasargadae (Routledge 2016), and Forming National Identity in Iran: The Idea of Homeland Derived from Ancient Persian and Islamic Imaginations of Place (IB Tauris 2014). His books and papers have been translated into Persian. 

Mozaffari is the founding co-editor of Berghahn’s series Explorations in Heritage Studies. His research website isheritageinwestasia.com.

Yiping Dong

Dr. Yiping Dong is an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. She is a trained architect and architectural historian. She has a Master's of Architecture Design and Theory and completed her Ph.D. in Architecture History and Theory from Tongji University in 2013. She is active in research related to built environment heritage.  

She is the deputy secretary of the Urban and Rural Built Heritage Academic Committee under the Architectural Society of China, an academic member of IAHAC (Industrial Architecture Heritage Academic Committee) of China, a member of TICCIH (International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage); and a member of ACHS (Association of Critical Heritage Studies). Her research interests include Critical Heritage Study, Heritage theory, Chinese architectural history and theory in a global context, Industrial heritage, and heritage-led regeneration, Architectural design in context, and the adaptive reuse of buildings.

Naomi Oosterman

Naomi Oosterman is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies and an affiliated researcher of the research group Heritage under Threat, part of the Centre for Global Heritage and Development. Her research interests cover the illicit trade in arts and antiquities (with a particular focus on Latin America), the policing of art and heritage crime, and the concepts of critical heritage, coloniality, and decoloniality. She is the editor (with Dr. Donna Yates, Maastricht University) of the volumes Crime and art: Sociological and criminological perspectives of crimes in the art world and Art Crime in ContextOpen. Currently, she is working on a volume (with Camila Malig Jedlicki and Dr. Rodrigo Christofoletti) titled Negotiating Decolonisation in Latin America: Colonial Heritage, Conflict, and Contestation, set to be published in mid-2023. 

Carsten Wergin

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies

Carsten Wergin trained at Goldsmiths College and the University of Bremen. After spending a few years at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and the University of New South Wales (Sydney), he joined Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg in 2014. His anthropological work is located at the intersections of heritage, culture, and ecology, with regional foci in Australia, the Indian Ocean, and the islands and beaches of the European Ultraperiphery.

Laurajane Smith, Founding Chairperson

Laurajane Smith is Director of the Centre of Heritage and Museum Studies in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra.  She is the ACHS's founder and founding chair (2012-14). Previously based at the University of York, UK, her research interests include re-theorising heritage as an embodied negotiation of the meaning of the past in the present. She has conducted research in the USA, UK, and Australia. Her numerous publications include Uses of Heritage (2006), Intangible Heritage (2009, with N. Akagawa), and Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes (2011, with P.A. Shackel and G. Campbell). She is the editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies (Routledge) and general co-editor of Routledge’s Key Issues in Cultural Heritage. 

Lucie K. Morisset, Past-President

Canada Research Chair on Urban Heritage, Lucie K. Morisset is professor at the Urban and Touristic Studies Department of the School of Management, University of Quebec in Montreal. A historian of architecture by training, she is interested in the ideas and objects of urban planning, notably in company towns. She has been leading research on the morphogenesis and the semiogenesis of the built landscape and on the relations between identity and culture as they are manifested throughout the practices of heritage and the production of the heritage discourse, including action-research on heritage development and heritage empowerment in partnership with local communities. Lucie K. Morisset is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.