Bart Zwegers defended his PhD dissertation Heritage in Transition: Global and Local Challenges in Germany and the United Kingdom, 1970-2010 on Wednesday 7 February 2018. His supervisors are Prof. dr. Ernst Homburg and Dr. Jo Wachelder.

The research project analyzes how the field of heritage preservation has changed over the past forty-five years. Since the introduction of World Heritage in 1972, international and local actors have been increasingly involved in heritage preserva-tion. Heritage in Transition introduces the Multi-Level Perspective to analyze how local, national and international actors and institutions in the heritage field interact. More specifically, a comparative study is made of controversies about six UNESCO World Heritage sites in Germany and the United Kingdom. The six cases comprise traditional monuments (the cathedral of Aachen and the castle and cathedral of Durham), industrial heritage (the Zollverein coalmine in Essen and the former tin and copper mines in Cornwall), and cities (Dresden and Liverpool). Studying how long-term landscape developments interact with local actors and nationally organized regimes, reveals important differences between the decentral-ized German and the centralized British governance of heritage preservation. These differences not only have consequences for the governance of heritage preservation within these countries, but also for their relationship with international organizations such as UNESCO.

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