🇬🇧 RePaZ

RePaZ (Research and Heritage in Crisis Zones) is a research unit hosted at the INHA (Paris), in collaboration with the mission « Terrains contraints » of UAR 2999 (CNRS) and the Observatoire des Patrimoines de l’Alliance Sorbonne Université (OPUS). It supports research on tangible heritage threatened by crises and assists researchers whose working conditions are profoundly undermined by restricted field access, political violence, or exile. RePaZ brings together expertise on the Middle East and its neighbouring regions.

Missions:

Bringing together research on heritage in crisis zones

RePaZ monitors projects in art history and archaeology focused on research in crisis zones, both in France and abroad. Particular attention is given to new methods and alternative methodologies.
This information is gathered and shared through several digital channels: website, newsletter, and social media.
The goal is to combat the growing isolation of researchers in this field, by giving them access to existing initiatives, strengthening support networks, and facilitating exchanges within an increasingly scattered and isolated community.

Supporting researchers

RePaZ hosts doctoral and postdoctoral contracts, as well as all types of fellowships, funded through public funding or private patronage.
RePaZ also monitors available funding opportunities (fellowships, calls for projects, emergency schemes) aimed at researchers in exile or in endangered situations.
These schemes are intended to prioritise researchers whose working conditions are threatened or prevented, whether due to armed conflict, political instability, or inability to access the field.

Creating a unique forum for scholarly debate

RePaZ brings together experts in heritage research and protection (international organisations, cultural institutions, ministerial actors) to collectively rethink scholarly and pedagogical practices in conflict zones.
This forum has a concrete mission: to formulate advice and recommendations on the human, financial, structural, and methodological needs required to maintain excellent scientific research on the regions concerned.

Activities:

RePaZ is exclusively dedicated to research on tangible heritage. The physical preservation of endangered heritage is already addressed by major initiatives — museums, institutions such as the Institut National du Patrimoine, associations and private organisations — and the unit is not intended to substitute for these efforts. Its focus lies elsewhere: maintaining research on cultural objects that bear witness to human societies, past and present.

Art history and archaeology are the core disciplines of this approach. However, any work engaging with questions of materiality and visuality may fall within RePaZ’s scope, provided it confronts the same central question: how can we sustain research on sites that have become partially or entirely inaccessible in times of crisis?

This question encompasses three complementary dimensions.

Knowledge and archives. When fieldwork becomes inaccessible, art history and archaeology archives become central resources. Documenting and analysing them helps ensure the survival of entire chapters of human history. It also means confronting unprecedented epistemological challenges: what does it mean to produce scientific knowledge from a distance? What tensions arise between situated knowledge and research conducted away from the field? What methods are available for studying cultural heritage in crisis zones?

Training and scholarly support. RePaZ is committed to supporting researchers by offering scholarly guidance tailored to the constraints that crises place on the conduct of research.

Academic hosting and affiliation. The unit provides an institutional residency for researchers whose working conditions are directly affected by conflicts or political crises, hosting doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars.