Cultural Property Protection. Military perspectives on the protection of cultural heritage from the Netherlands, France and the UK

You are kindly invited to join the upcoming online ICOMOS-Lecture on Wednesday September 8th.

The topic of this evening will be ‘Cultural Property Protection: Military perspectives on the protection of cultural heritage from the Netherlands and the UK’.

 

From Palmyra to Timbuktu, we see that the destruction of cultural heritage can have tremendous effects on communities, leaving people disconnected, traumatized and even persecuted. Increasingly, cultural property protection is being recognized and better addressed as a humanitarian issue in its own right.

 

Perhaps less known is that cultural property protection is an increasingly important issue within the military as well. Various national armies are looking to find methods to incorporate culture and cultural heritage into their practices with the purpose to prevent damage and destruction, both deliberate and collateral.

 

For our upcoming lecture, we have invited speakers from different countries to discuss how the military came to play a role in the protection of cultural heritage in their countries, using examples from practice, and what recent developments in cultural property protection entail.

 

PROGRAMME



19:30    Welcome and introduction: Ardjuna Candotti and Daan Lavies

 

19:35    Ankie Petersen (NL)

In the first lecture, Capt Ankie Petersen will provide some broader background to cultural property protection (CPP) as enshrined in the Hague Convention and its protocols. She will also talk about the establishment and evolution of CPP in the Dutch Armed Forces in the Netherlands since 1953, and its current state and challenges.

 

19:55    Tim Purbrick (UK)

Lt Col Tim Purbrick will talk about the re-establishment of a cultural property protection (CPP) in the British Army for the first time since the end of WW2. The talk will cover background to CPP issues and the development of the military capability, including policy, geospatial data, education, training and the CPP unit.



20.15    Short break



20:25    Tim Le Berre (FR)

Capt Timothee le Berre will provide a French perspective to the development of CPP in a military context, with reference to practical experiences with the recent deployment of two military curators, one in Central African Republic and one in Mali.

 

20:45    Panel discussion among the speakers + Q&A with audience



21:00   End



NB Every lecturer will present for 15 minutes, with 5 minutes subsequently for questions from the audience

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS



Ankie Petersen:

Captain Ankie Petersen has a background in architectural history and heritage studies, holding two Master’s Degrees from VU University Amsterdam. Having previously worked for the Dutch National Commission for UNESCO, dealing with amongst others the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, she now is a reserve officer in the Dutch Royal Armed Forces, working on the protection of cultural property from the Section Cultural History and Information since january 2021. Alongside her work on CPP, she works freelance on several projects related to community participation in heritage conservation, and on cultural emergency response from a civilian perspective.

 

Tim Purbrick:

Lt Col Tim Purbrick, an Army Reserve Officer, is the Commander of the British Army’s Cultural Property Protection Unit. Tim was an infantry platoon commander in Northern Ireland, a tank commander in the 1991 Gulf War, the Spokesman for the Army Defence Press Office, the Combat Camera Team commander in Former Yugoslavia and the Commanding Officer of the Media Operations Group (Volunteers). He has served in media operation roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 5 years, he developed plans for the future of media operations, information warfare and cyber warfare at Army Headquarters during which time he wrote a paper on CPP for the Army before he was ordered to establish a CPP unit. 

 

Tim Le Berre:

Captain Tim Le Berre holds a Master’ Degree from the Ecole du Louvre in Art History and Heritage Conservation, and a Master’s Degree from the University of Heidelberg in Military History. Since 2019, he has been serving as the Deputy Curator of the French Army at the French Army Heritage Office in Paris. Since 2018, he has been working on the implementation of Cultural Property Protection in French military operations. He notably led an exploratory mission during his last deployment in Mali. His work is currently taking two forms: the establishment of a French military CPP capacity on the one hand, and a research project about French military operations and Cultural Property Protection as part of a PhD at Newcastle University under the supervision of Professor Peter Stone.

The ICOMOS Netherlands Lecture Committee: Ankie Petersen, Ardjuna Candotti, Daan Lavies, Jean-Paul Corten, Job Pardoel, Maurits van Putten, Remco Vermeulen, Sofia Lovegrove and Thijs van Roon.