At its annual meeting, the American Society of International Law awarded a Certificate of Merit to Dr. Janet Blake, associate professor at the Department of Human Rights and Environment Law of the Faculty of Law of SBU, in recognition of high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers and scholars for “The 2003 UNESCO Intangible Heritage Convention: A Commentary”. The book was edited by Janet Blake and Lucas Lixinski and published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
This book critically analyses the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO's latest and ground-breaking treaty in the area of cultural heritage protection. Intangible cultural heritage is broadly understood as the social processes that inform our living cultures, and our social cohesion and identity as communities and peoples. On the basis of this conception, the Treaty proposes to turn our understanding of how, for whom, and why heritage is safeguarded on its head, by putting communities, groups and individuals at the centre of the safeguarding process. The commentary, written by leading experts in the field from all continents and multiple disciplines, provides an authoritative guide to interpreting and implementing not only this Treaty, but also its ripple effects on how we think about cultural heritage and our experience with it as a part of our living cultures. This book is of interest to lawyers, policy-makers, anthropologists, cultural diplomacy specialists, archaeologists, cultural heritage studies experts, and, foremost, the people who practice and enact this heritage.
