Marine Spaces – Planning / Culture / Climate
Supported by a grant from the European Commission, Koç University is building a Joint MA programme on Sustainable Ocean Management with the Universities of Oldenburg, Copenhagen, and Edinburgh, and with specialists from the Ocean Decade Heritage Network and the State Archaeology Department of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Marine Spaces – Planning / Culture / Climate (MS-PCC) initiative is building a new Joint MA programme on Sustainable Ocean Management integrating aspects of Maritime Cultural Heritage and Climate Change with the principles of Marine Spatial Planning. Policy positions in the UN 2030 Agenda, the Blue Growth Strategy of the EU, and the UN Decade of Ocean Science require cross-discplinary experise in these three themes for their effective implementation, yet no taught postgraduate programme in the European Higher Education Area jointly addresses these issues. The aim of the MS-PCC is to meet the needs established by these long-term policies and to fill this gap in the educational environment.
The MS-PCC programme is designed around student mobility to acquire the skills and training necessary to meet the needs of these new long-term policies. During the classroom phase of this programme, students will spend one term each at Koç University, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Oldenburg, for training in Maritime Cultural Heritage issues, aspects of Climate Change, and Marine Spatial Planning. Augmenting this work will be specialist seminars from the University of Edinburgh, the Ocean Decade Heritage Network, and the State Archaeology Department of Schleswig-Holstein, as well as summer internship opportunities either in the field or with stakeholder organizations.
Partners and Expertise
Koç University, Turkey: Maritime Archaeology and Maritime Cultural Heritage
Based in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Michael Jones and Matthew Harpster will teach and train MS-PCC students elements of Maritime Archaeology and Maritime Cultural Heritage, based upon their specialty in Maritime Archaeology, their creation and management of KUDAR, and their experience in three Maritime Cultural Heritage Initiatives:
Yenikapı Rescue Excavation (2004-2012): In addition to his curent role directing KUDAR’s maritime archaeological conservation laboratory, Dr. Michael Jones is able to draw upon his experience as part of the international team leading the management and recovery of 37 shipwrecks found during the rescue excavations of the Byzantine-era harbour at Yenikapı, Istanbul. This was a highly complex work environment: An active construction site for a major transportation hub, an ongoin rescue excavation, a multi-lingual and multi-national team, and a vast corpus of archaeological data. In addition to the historical results, the project also yielded a new cohort of archaeologists in Turkey intimately familiar with the complex dynamics between infrastructure development, national politics, and maritime heritage, a skillset subsequently applied at other coastal sites impacted by widespread tourism development in Turkey. Like his colleagues, Dr. Jons uses this experience in the teaching and field projects central to the MS-PCC, ensuring hat students understand the practical realities of Maritime Cultural Heritage work, and the theoretical ideals, that can distinguish successful, efficient, and impactful results.
Between 2010 and 2013, Dr. Matthew Harpster was the Director of the Kyrenia Shipwreck Collection Restoration Programme, a multi-national effort to revitalize and update the curation, infrastructure, and display of a shipwreck found off the coast of Cyprus. Like oyjer Maritime Cultural Heritage Projects, the success of this effort was based upon a combination of public support, political will, and funding. Unlike other projects, gathering the necessary support was complicated by the presence of the archaeological collection in northern Cyprus, a region classified as occupied territory by the United Nations. To succeed, the project had to navigate the intricate political history betwen the Greek-speaking and Turkish-spaking communities, as well as the mediation efforts of the European Commission and the UN Offices on Cyprus. The project began revitalization work by 2013, and had raised approximately 150,000 EUR from the European Commission and private donors; admininstrative support was also supplied by the US Embassy and the Australian High Commission. The value of this project for MS-PCC students is Dr. Harpster’s extensive first-hand experience of international heritage policy and conventions, the combination of political and national agendas with Maritime Cultural Heritage, and the practicalities of designing and implementing a heritage management project.
University of Copenhagen, Denmark: Climate Change and Climate Science
In addition to participating in twelve other ongoing actions supported by the European Commission and the Independent Research Fund of Denmark, the Niels Bohr Institute at the university is also the coordinating partner of the TiPES project.
University of Oldenburg, Germany: Marine Spatial Planning
The COAST center has been a partner or coordinator in three complementary EU actions since 2016 that have generated a progression of fundamental teaching modules in Marine Spatial Planning that are key to the impact and sustainability of the MS-PCC.
University of Edinburgh, Scotland: Sustainable Maritime Heritage Management
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Ocean Decade Heritage Network:
Established in 2019, the ODHN has sucessfully lobbied for the incrased integration of maritime archaeology and Maritime Cultural Heritage principles into the agenda of the UN Decade of Ocean Science, including an integrated approach to marine sciences in the Societal Outcomes of the Decade. ODHN has partnerships with UNESCO-IOC, the Danish National Commission for UNESCO, and the Honor Frost Foundation.
A central component of the ODHN is the Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (CHFP). Endorsed as a Decade Action in 2021 by the UN Decade of Ocean Science, the CHFP is an administrative framework that can showcase activities integrating Maritime Cultural Heritage and Ocean Science, develop capacity, encourage public engagement, and multiply the impact of varied Maritime Cultural Heritage actions. For the MS-PCC programme, the ODHN and the CHFP are essential for its relevance and impact. Through the CHFP, the MS-PCC is present in a key multi-national forum to disseminate intermediate and final results, can increase the scale and diversity of our student cohort, and multiply the programme’s impact.
State Archaeology Department of Schleswig-Holstein