Heritage, culture & identity
Islands are places of extraordinary cultural depth, shaped by migration, creolisation, resistance, and continuity. This theme explores how island communities preserve, perform, and transmit their identities in a rapidly changing world.
About this theme
Island cultures are among the world's most distinct and resilient, born from centuries of contact, displacement, adaptation, and creative synthesis. Languages, music, cuisine, spiritual practices, and built heritage form the living fabric of island identity.
Yet island cultures face unprecedented pressures: globalisation, youth emigration, digital disruption, and the commodification of culture through mass tourism. How do communities safeguard what matters most while remaining open to the world?
Curaçao is a living example of this tension and richness: a UNESCO World Heritage city where Papiamentu, Dutch, Spanish, and English coexist; where West African, European, South American, and Caribbean traditions have merged into something entirely unique.
Topics of interest
- →Creole languages, multilingualism, and language revitalisation
- →Intangible cultural heritage and UNESCO frameworks on islands
- →Postcolonial identity formation and cultural decolonisation
- →Digital preservation of island heritage (archives, oral histories)
- →Diaspora communities and transnational island identities
- →Heritage tourism: celebration, commodification, and community control
- →Architecture, urban heritage, and the built environment of island cities
- →Music, carnival, and performing arts as cultural resilience
- →Religious diversity, syncretism, and spiritual life on islands
- →Islandness, sense of place, and what it means to live on an island
Submission formats welcome
Papers, panels, creative presentations, and practitioner contributions are all welcome. We especially encourage submissions that centre island community voices and non-Western knowledge frameworks.