Paper short abstract:

This paper explores a complex methodological approach to trace and analyse international knowledge networks of ‘heritage conservation and development’ in the context of postcolonial historic cities of the Mediterranean region.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores a methodological approach to trace and analyse international knowledge networks of 'heritage conservation and socio-economic development' that emerged from the 1990s within the narrative of sustainable development. It focuses on historic cities of the (southern) Mediterranean: a postcolonial sea, a place of knowledge circulation and epistemological fractures between East and West. The aim is to understand how expert knowledge flows, and institutional alliances between diverse organisations, influence the transformation of historic cities through normative policy narratives.

The Medina of Tunis offers a unique insight into four decades of urban conservation, its underpinning rationales and expert knowledge practices, besides processes of knowledge circulation within an international network (ASM Tunis, AKAA, EU, UNESCO and World Bank).

I will present the interpretivist, multi-sited, research methodology developed for my PhD to interrogate how heritage diplomacy networks materialise through the work of knowledge actors, and the physical transformations they oversee. Key questions include: how can scholars research histories of individual institutions that are part of the network and, at the same time, focus on specific exchanges occurring across knowledge sites? How do we go about understanding knowledge transfer(s) across 'international' and 'local' expertise in a way that recognises different directions of transmission and appropriation?

The argument is that to understand flows of expert knowledge within these networks we need complex methodologies - combining historical, discursive and ethnographic approaches - to illustrate multiple interpretations of policy categories (eg public space) coexisting within the network and negotiation processes involved in shaping hegemonic ones.