Dr Francesca Giliberto is Research Fellow at the University of Leeds on the project “Heritage and Global Development” as part of the Praxis research team. In the past seven years she has carried out comparative and interdisciplinary research addressing global challenges related to cultural heritage and sustainable development as well as urban conservation and management in the framework of the UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape Approach, the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Her work purposely aims to have an impact in theory and in practice, to influence decision-making and to foster societal challenges. It argues for a positive integration of cultural heritage (and culture in general) into urban development plans and policies a way to enhance sustainability of urban areas, the promotion of integrated and inclusive urban management systems, and the necessity to produce and use adequate assessment and evaluation tools to define new strategies and policies and to revise and monitor existing ones.

After a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Architecture (heritage preservation and restoration), she further specialised with a master in “World Heritage and cultural projects for development” and with a joint PhD at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and at the University of Kent (UK). She has just finished her Post-Doctoral research on “Rethinking Heritage for Development: International Frameworks, Local impacts” at the University of Kent, which focused on how heritage contributes to poverty alleviation, gender equality and environmental management in Sub-Saharan Africa and the South-Eastern Mediterranean area. She has also conducted research outside academia, collaborating with a range of professionals and stakeholders, such as national, local and regional governments and institutions, civil servants, NGOs, conservation practitioners, architects and town planners. Projects include a feasibility study for the creation of an Observatory of all Italian World Heritage sites carried out for Fitzcarraldo Foundation and commissioned by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage (MIBAC) and the preparation of the nomination dossier for the inscription of “Ivrea, Industrial City of the XX Century” in the World Heritage List (inscribed in June 2018) for Adriano Olivetti Foundation.

She has lived and worked in four different countries (Italy, France, Spain and the UK) and has been actively involved in no-profit associations such as ICOMOS, the Italian Youth Association for UNESCO and ANCSA (Italian Association for Historic and Artistic Centres).

Resource Archive

Search or browse the resource archive for films, reports, toolkits and other resources produced by the Changing the Story and its commissioned projects. Items written by Dr Francesca Giliberto are listed below: