We are pleased to announce that our session has been accepted for the AIMA-ICUCH Conference in  Canberra, Australia ( 14 -15 September 2023). Please read on for details of the session and how to submit an abstract.

Session: 3
Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage in the Context of the Ocean Decade

Chairs: Athena Trakadas, Andy Viduka, Emily Jateff

The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-30 provides an opportunity to promote and enable a truly interdisciplinary approach to marine sciences. The Ocean Decade initiative also provides an opportunity to ensure that cultural heritage can be better integrated into broader marine management frameworks. But how will these opportunities be fully realised? How can maritime archaeologists and cultural heritage managers, in theory and practice, enact genuinely integrated – natural and cultural – marine resource management? This session will serve as a forum to discuss our experiences, reflecting upon practical actions and outlining priorities for our field’s contributions to realising the Ocean Decade’s Objectives and Outcomes.

We invite papers that focus on specific examples of projects and plans with strong maritime and underwater cultural heritage components that have integrated management approaches.

As a point of departure, we ask: What specific integrated approaches have these projects/plans applied? What are the capacity building and resource mobilisation efforts and communications and engagement strategies? Are there relationships/frameworks for cultural heritage within the Marine Protected Areas and Integrated Coastal Zone Management initiatives within the country/region? What are the challenges to engaging more constructively with the marine sciences? What recommendations could be made for future endeavours, regarding policy, administration, and practice?

Submission Guidelines:

• The abstract should include a paper title, presenter names and affiliation with contact e-mails, and one nominated contact person
• The abstract should not exceed 300 words in length
• Papers may be presented either online and in-person at the conference
• Paper abstracts should follow the AJMA Author Guidelines which can be downloaded from https://www.aima-underwater.org.au/aima-publications.html 

Enquiries & abstract submission: conference@aima-underwater.org.au. Abstracts will be accepted until 4 August, 5pm AEST.

For more information on the conference a whole, please visit the conference website!