Perspectives on Heritage Tourism - Seameo-SPAFA

<strong>Perspectives</strong> on Heritage Tourism
<strong>Perspectives</strong> on Heritage Tourism
to Asian cinema, Southeast Asian literature, and contemporary, and
popular culture.
These are study programmes leading to a Masters Degree in Arts
Management and Cultural Heritage. I drafted these programmes
almost a decade ago, and we are planning to do our own at
SPAFA in mutual cooperation with the universities in the region.
Conservation should benefit from courses in heritage education
such as those presented, and perhaps others.
Certainly, there are more programmes and courses for inclusion;
however, these have to respond to the needs of the countries, and
thus should be based on their specific situations. In addition, their
courses should also go hand in hand with their pursuit of sensitive
cultural management policies and practices while underscoring
inter-disciplinary cooperation to achieve the best results.
Beyond becoming purveyors of multi-disciplinary approaches
to cultural management, universities should also learn how to
work together on the national, regional, and international levels.
Through this, expertise is shared effectively, and appropriate and
proactive solutions are reached and better disseminated.
Pisit Charoenwongsa is the Director of the Southeast Asian
Ministers of Education Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine
Arts (SEAMEO SPAFA). He was educated in the fields of arts,
archaeology, and anthropology in the University of Silpakorn
(Thailand), University of London (UK), and University of
Pennsylvania (USA). Pisit was a lecturer at Silpakorn University’s
Faculty of Archaeology, and the Chief of Research and Expert in
Archaeology at the Fine Arts Department (Thailand). He directed
numerous field projects that accelerated the development
of archaeological research in the whole of Southeast Asia.
He is also a committee member in a wide number of councils
and commissions in Thailand and abroad that focus on education,
archaeology, history, art, and culture, and he is a prolific
author, with more than a hundred papers and several books
(in both Thai and English), some of which were translated into
French, Italian, and German.
SPAFA’s goal is to foster dialogue and agreement with key universities
in the region that would collaborate in such unified consortium
on cultural resource management that serves the region’s
current needs. We hope to make headway in bringing as many
academics and cultural resource managers to implement a cohesive,
yet flexible, programme.
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