Course Catalogue

View Specification Document | Reading List

This C4L course critically examines social and cultural justice through the lens of the restitution of cultural heritage. It focuses on fundamental questions about who has the right to culture and who owns the past. The course reveals how issues of justice, power, and identity shape debates over the return of cultural objects, natural resources, and ancestral remains. It examines these debates through Indigenous, postcolonial, and community-centred perspectives, exploring how cultural materials were displaced through colonialism, war, and global trade, and how contemporary restitution claims intersect with cultural rights, sovereignty, and reconciliation. Students will engage with global debates on restitution and reparative justice and investigate how these are challenging traditional power dynamics. Applied case study analysis and object-based learning will allow students to investigate how cultural harm, effectuated through the looting, trafficking and exploitation of cultural objects, is reproduced and normalised. Cultural objects (including their collections and displays) are herein approached not as static artefacts, but as dynamic sites where harm is continuously produced and contested. Students will examine the legal frameworks, ethical dilemmas, and political negotiations involved in returning cultural objects to source communities. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, they will be encouraged to think critically about who controls culture and what justice means in a postcolonial world.

11 x 2-hour problem-based, interactive sessions on weekly basis on campus, except Week 6 (field trip to Hunterian or Kelvingrove Museum).

None

None

None

1. 500-word poster and reflective voiceover (with or without camera, at least 3 minutes) on social justice and heritage repatriation - 50%

2. 2,000 word essay, addressing the question if heritage repatriation is successful in advancing social justice, using examples from case studies and class readings to support students' position - 50%

Both of these assessments are individual to maximize inclusivity, particularly accommodating neurodivergence needs. However, all sessions are interactive, with the formative assessment and Moodle homework exercises being further opportunities for collaboration.

This iterative summative assessment design reflects a pedagogic commitment to reflexivity and critical pluralism. Students first articulate and reflect on their own position (reflexive argumentation) in the poster presentation, before developing critical analysis that engages with competing perspectives in the essay. This approach supports the development of transferable analytical skills, particularly important in a newly established course and directly relevant to graduate employability.

Course convenors and teaching staff will ensure that due consideration is given to students with disabilities, and that reasonable adjustments are implemented wherever possible, in consultation with relevant support services.

 A Flexible Assessment approach will be applied, in line with Disability Service recommendations. This includes:

■ Consideration of alternative assessment formats where appropriate (e.g., adaptations to oral assessments)

■ Implementation of reasonable adjustments on a case-by-case basis

This course equips students to critically evaluate today's assumptions about heritage ownership, preservation, and protection that are largely shaped by dominant Western narratives. By challenging these inherited frameworks, students will deepen their understanding of what a genuinely decolonized engagement with heritage, identity and justice requires, while prompting them to reflect on their own positionality as global citizens. Through applied case study analysis, reflexive practice, and engagement with real-world policy and institutional contexts, students will develop the capacity to assess and communicate complex ethical and political issues to diverse audiences, think critically across disciplinary boundaries, and propose equitable, context-sensitive responses to restitution claims. This approach enables students to grapple with the complexities of global governance, diplomacy, and ethical practice, while deepening their understanding of how heritage informs collective memory and contemporary struggles for equity and recognition. Drawing on diverse knowledges, students will strengthen key skills such as critical thinking, cross-cultural analysis and collaboration, ethical reasoning, policy and legal evaluation, and applied research methods. Ultimately, the course equips students to contribute meaningfully to ongoing debates on social and heritage justice in diverse global contexts.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Communicate complex ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding heritage ownership and restitution in a clear and accessible format.

2. Explain how contemporary heritage justice debates justify the displacement of heritage.

3. Critically and reflexively evaluate competing frameworks for heritage stewardship.

4. Develop evidence-based arguments that analyse real-world global case studies and advance socially just approaches to cultural heritage governance.