Delhi is preparing to host the first-ever International Heritage Symposium and Exhibition (IHSE) at the National Museum in Janpath. The event, which will be headlined by a symposium featuring distinguished speakers, aims for interdisciplinary discussions that will help preserve India&rsquos cultural heritage for posterity. Slated for January 15 and 16, 2020, it has been organised by India&rsquos Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.
The symposium will have seven panel discussions featuring speakers like Ms Junhi Han (Chief of Culture Sector, UNESCO New Delhi), Prof Katsushi Ikeuchi (University of Tokyo), Prof Nadia Thalmann (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Prof Santanu Chaudhury (IIT Jaipur), Ms Anna Roy (Niti Aayog), Prof P.J. Naranayanan (IIT Hyderabad) and Prof Sree Srinivasan (former Chief Digital Officer, Met Museum, New York) well-known personalities from the fields of history, arts, and the performing arts and policy-makers from the Ministries of Tourism, Culture, and Water Resources.
The event will also kick off a month-long exhibition at the National Museum from January 15 that focuses on new technology related to heritage management. Two books on digital heritage, including a book on Digital Hampi, will be launched.
This is the first event that will bring together domain experts from science and technology, culture and social sciences, all of whom engage in the conservation and heritage management via physical and digital means Scientists, academia, historians, social scientists, musicologists and policymakers will converge at the National Museum to discuss the best practices for heritage management. They will identify existing conservation issues for India, and showcase cutting-edge technology being developed and tested to re-create monuments digitally for computerised archiving of heritage sites.
The foundation to IHSE 2020 was the Indian Digital Heritage which concluded in 2014. It supported collaborative projects between researchers for the digital documentation and interpretation of India's tangible and intangible heritage.