Advocating for a provocative speaker – INTERCOM’s  contribution to S. Weil memorial Lecture

The memorial lecture during the ICOM General Conference is jointly organized by INTERCOM, ICOM US, ICOM ICEE and the Secretariat. Stephen E. Weil Memorial Lectures are held to honour Stephen Edward Weil (1928-2005), deputy director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden 1974-1995, senior scholar emeritus at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies since 1995, who was the author of several publications that had a significant impact on museums’ work (“Rethinking the museum and other meditations”, “A cabinet of curiosities : inquiries into museums and their prospects”, “Making museums matter”). This year INTERCOM proposed a distinguished Serbian researcher and activist Višnja Kisić who is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sport and Tourism Novi Sad, lecturer at UNESCO Chair MA in Cultural Policy and Management in Belgrade and University Hassan II Casablanca, and a visiting professor at the University Lyon II and International Relations University Beijing. She holds a BA in Art History, MA in Cultural Policy and Management, and PhD in Heritage Studies. In her research, teaching, and practice she explores entanglements between heritage, politics, and ecological relations, focusing on issues of heritage dissonance, conflicts, and reconciliation; heritage politics and participatory governance; capitalist critique in heritage, culture, and policy; as well as ecological turn in culture and heritage studies. She has worked as a trainer, lecturer, and researcher in very different contexts and cultures, in the public, civil and private sectors in over 20 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America.

Višnja Kisić has authored books, academic texts, and guidebooks in the museum and heritage field, among which “Beyond the Good, the Neutral and the Consensual: Heritage between the Police and the Politics”; “Heritage research in the 21st century: departing from the useful futures of sustainable development” (2021); “Shaking the Solid: Heritage in the Era of Plurality” (2018); “Governing Heritage Dissonance: Promises and Realities of Selected Cultural Policies” (2016). Currently, Višnja is a researcher in INVENT – European Inventory of Societal Values of Culture as a Basis for Inclusive Cultural Policies in the Globalizing World (Horizon 2020); “Sharing subaltern knowledge through international cultural collaborations” (Erasmus Strategic Partnership); EPICA – Empowering Participation in Culture, Heritage and Architecture: Activating Public Resources for and with Community (Ministry of Science of Serbia and World Bank).

She is a member of ICOM Serbia, Europa Nostra, and Balkan Museum Network, and is a Board Member in Europa Nostra Serbia, Southeast European Heritage Network and Ministry of Space. From 2019 she has been a Member of the Advisory Expert Board for the “7 Most Endangered” Program of Europa Nostra and the Institute of European Investment Bank. For her research and professional engagement, she has been awarded the National Museum Award 2009, European Cultural Policy Research Award 2013, and Jelena Šantić Award for Activist Engagement in Culture 2020.

Višnja Kisić, as a strong candidate, of INTERCOM is the first expert from South-East Europe who has been proposed for the candidate for the Memorial Lecture.

At the meeting on February 16 partners will decide who will be the lecturer at the General Conference in 2022. The INTERCOM member in charge is Ole Winther, the Board member of the committee.