The Asia-Pacific Research Forum for ICH Safeguarding, in conjunction with IRCI’s research project ‘Preliminary Research on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Ecosystems’, will host the 9th Online Seminar for Safeguarding ICH in the Asia-Pacific Region on 18 September 2025.

Professor Christina F. Kreps from the University of Denver, who also serves as Director of the Museum of Anthropology, is invited as lecturer to share her insight on spiritual traditions and ecological practices in the context of environmental conservation. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork experience in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, Professor Kreps will explore how spiritual beliefs, customary law, guardian spirits, taboos, and other elements of intangible cultural heritage function as mechanisms for safeguarding tangible heritage, including museum collections and ‘heritage’ sites.

The seminar is open to the public. Anyone interested in the topic is welcome to join upon registration.

We look forward to your participation.

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Abstract
In this seminar, Christina Kreps invites participants to engage in a conversation on “spiritual ecology” and the connections between belief systems and the protection of cultural and environmental heritage. In addition to approaches to spiritual ecology, open for discussion is how peoples’ belief in guardian spirits and other invisible forces as well as taboos and customary law have been mechanisms for cultural and environmental conservation. Kreps is especially interested in the manifestation of spiritual ecology in material culture and art plus the intersection of this tangible and intangible culture in vernacular museologies.

Lecturer’s Profile
Christina Kreps is Professor of Anthropology, Director of Museum and Heritage Studies and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Denver (Colorado, USA). Her research has focused on the anthropological study of museums and museological behavior from critical, cross-cultural, comparative and historical perspectives. She has been conducting research in Europe, Asia, and the US for more than three decades, and has participated in several community-based museum and heritage projects in Indonesia and Thailand.
Her publications include Pragmatic Imagination and the New Museum Anthropology, co-edited with Christina Hodge (Routledge 2024), Museums and Anthropology in the Age of Engagement (Routledge 2003), and Liberating Culture: Museums, Curation, and Heritage Preservation (Routledge 2002). One of her book chapters is ‘Sacred Objects and Their (Re)Contextualization in Local Museologies’ in The Museum in Asia, edited by Yunci Cai and published this year by Routledge.

How to join: Click HERE for registration (Registration deadline: 17 September 2025 (JST))

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Should you have any inquiries, please feel free to contact us.

IRCI Secretariat
TEL: 　+81-72-275-8050
Email: irci@nich.go.jp

Click to see the flyer of the 9th Online Seminar