I have spent the day engrossed in a literature review associated with some research I'm doing in partnership with Dr Elizabeth Carnegie of the University of Sheffield, looking at student engagement with the World Heritage Site in Durham. We are interested in whether or not living and studying within a WHS has an impact on their attitudes to heritage in general, and to the values of the WHS in particular.
There is a growing body of research that looks at how tourists engage with (or don't) World Heritage values in destinations, and other researchers have focussed more on how communities react to, and are affected by, WHS status. But no-one has yet looked at how students engage with WHS - they are short-term residents, spending 9 to 12 weeks at a time in the area, several times a year for 3 or 4 years. So according to UNWTO definitions, they are tourists. But their motivations for staying in the destination are very particular, and it is unlikely that WHS status had anything to do with their decision to travel to the city in question (whilst we are looking at Durham, there are many other WHS that have universities and colleges in their core).
Thinking of Durham in particular, the heritage of the peninsula, that part of the city ascribed WHS status, plays a key role in creating the atmosphere that is valued by many university students. Already, we have anecdotal evidence that students living in one of the colleges that looks on to the great East Window feel inspired by the view when looking at it from their rooms, whilst we know that the opportunity to graduate in a ceremony held within the cathedral is valued by some university alumni.
Our first phase of primary research will start next week, with the first public presentation of our findings being at a conference Liz is attending in the Caribbean in January. That will be followed by another presentation at a one-day seminar on Communities and World Heritage we are hosting in Durham in March, and finally a paper that will be submitted to a leading academic journal some time in the spring.
