Thomas Söderqvist 
The European Academic Heritage Network UNIVERSEUM will hold its 12th annual meeting on the theme ‘Arranging and rearranging: Planning university heritage for the future’, at the University of Padua (Italy), 26-29 May 2011.’
How should the academic heritage of universities be organized? There are many models, from the centralized university museum or archive to the dispersed collections kept by departments or individuals. There are many different ways of organizing academic heritage that may or may not fit a particular collection or institution. Visions and objectives of curators, researchers and teachers involved in academic heritage are often quite different from those of university administrators and leadership. For both, in many cases, heritage is intrinsically connected to the question of identity: identity of academic disciplines, identity of local departments, and the identity of the university. Much is at stake, as recent cuts in funding and the reorganization of universities across Europe places many collections at risk. How can we ensure the preservation, study and interpretation of our academic heritage? How can we organize this heritage in ways that can harmoniously reconcile the needs of contemporary universities with th specificities and needs of academic heritage?
Paper presentations are limited to 20 minutes, including 5 minutes for discussion. The conference language is English. Send <200 words abstracts to PaduaMeeting2011@universeum.it before 15 February 2011. Please use the abstract template at the conference website. Include a <50 words biography re. your main research interests The proposals will be reviewed by the Programme Committee (Marta Lourenço, University of Lisbon; Sofia Talas, University of Padua (Chair); Roland Wittje, University of Regensburg). Speakers will be given notice by 1 March 2011.
