Rodney Harrison (academic)

• Comment: I've added the standard decline text above to provide some useful links. This draft needs to be condensed to focus on the notability standards at WP:NACADEMIC and remove the repeated WP:PUFFERY. For example, we don't need to know in separate sentences where and how each work has been reviewed. Triptothecottage (talk) 22:54, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: In accordance with Wikipedia's Conflict of interest guideline, I disclose that I have a conflict of interest regarding the subject of this article. Mrfrankh (talk) 19:16, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

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Rodney Harrison is a British-Australian archaeologist and academic who is Professor of Heritage Studies at University College London. His research focuses on heritage, archaeology, critical heritage studies and the relationship between heritage and contemporary social and environmental issues.

Career and research

Harrison studied archaeology in Australia and subsequently held academic positions in Australia before joining The Open University as a lecturer in 2007. He moved to University College London in 2012, where he became Professor of Heritage Studies. His research has addressed heritage as a social and political practice, including questions of memory, materiality, conservation and the changing role of heritage in contemporary society.

Harrison has been associated with the development of critical heritage studies, an approach that examines heritage not only as the preservation of the past but also as a process through which societies select, organise and interpret the past. His work has also examined heritage in relation to the Anthropocene, climate change, museums and environmental change.

He has served as a founding executive committee member of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies and as founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology.

Publications

Harrison is the author or editor of several books on heritage and archaeology. His book Heritage: Critical Approaches was published by Routledge in 2013. The book examines the development of heritage studies and approaches heritage through questions of memory, materiality, politics and social practice. It was reviewed in Memory Studies, Journal of Folklore Research Reviews and Norwegian Archaeological Review.

He was also editor of Understanding the Politics of Heritage, published in 2010, and is a co-author of After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past (2010). His later work includes Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums and Material Culture (2017) and Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices (2020).

Museums and climate change

Harrison has worked on the relationship between museums, heritage and climate change. He led the development of Reimagining Museums for Climate Action, a project that invited museums and cultural organisations to develop proposals for addressing climate change through museum practice. The project was associated with preparations for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.

His work on museums and climate action has received coverage outside academia, including an interview with the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit and discussion of museums and environmental responsibility in The Guardian.

Awards

In 2005, Harrison's book Shared Landscapes: Archaeologies of Attachment and the Pastoral Industry in Australia received the John Mulvaney Book Award from the Australian Historical Archaeology Association. The book subsequently received the Graham Connah Book Prize in 2008.

In 2026, Harrison received the European Archaeological Heritage Prize from the European Association of Archaeologists. The association cited his sustained work concerning the protection of archaeological heritage, professional leadership, public engagement and approaches to conservation, climate resilience and inclusive stewardship.

References

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