Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Individual Specialist on Intercultural Learning at Museums and Heritage Sites, UNESCO, ​France (but remote). Deadline: 31 December 2024.

In the framework of the “Fostering Positive Social Transformations in AlUla” project in partnership with the Royal Commission for AlUla (Saudi Arabia), UNESCO is developing a set of activities to create a vision and guidance for promoting intercultural dialogue and learning at museums and heritage sites. While supporting AlUla’s aspiration of becoming a global destination for art, culture and nature tourism and creating the world’s largest Living Museum, this initiative will also develop a longer-term vision for promoting intercultural understanding through heritage, thus contributing to UNESCO’s strategic objective of building inclusive, just and peaceful societies. This project is also in line with the UNESCO’s Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society, adopted in 2015, which underlines the key role of museums and heritage preservation in fostering intercultural dialogue, social integration and cohesion.

One of the key objectives of this project is to promote the role of museums and heritages sites as spaces for intercultural dialogue and learning by designing a visitor experience that would enable the participants to develop intercultural competencies through engaging in live dialogue and sharing their cultural inheritance with each other. This experience will be designed during the Intercultural Training Week for museum and heritage site management professionals that will be held in Paris on 17-21 February 2025.

In particular, this experience will build upon UNESCO’s work to promote intercultural competencies through the UNESCO Story Circles methodology which has been used for several years to equip individuals with knowledge, skills and attitudes for effective and appropriate communication across differences, such as listening, empathy, critical thinking, cultural self-awareness, respect for diversity, and a sense of common humanity.

As part of this project, UNESCO will produce a publication which will serve as a guide for museums and heritage sites in promoting intercultural dialogue and learning.

Under the overall authority of the Chief of the Section for Inclusion, Rights and Intercultural Dialogue and the direct supervision of the Programme Specialist, and in close coordination with the Associate Project Officer, the Individual Specialist shall:

• Lead the design and development of the publication exploring the role of museums and heritage sites in promoting intercultural learning – through examining the existing case studies and developing future guidance;
• Make sure the publication describes key approaches and methodologies in intercultural learning;
• Highlight the role of museums and heritage sites as key spaces for intercultural dialogue and learning;
• Provide an overview of the existing initiatives promoting intercultural learning at museums and demonstrating how heritage can foster dialogue through an evidence-based approach;
• Ensure the publication features several successful case studies promoting intercultural understanding at scale from around the world;
• Outline the methodology and proposed impact assessment tools for the visitor experience designed as part of this project, providing a structured algorithm for replicating this experience in various cultural and institutional contexts.

The final publication will be launched at UNESCO at the end of the project will be freely accessible through the UNESCO Digital Library.

The Individual Specialist will work remotely. The period of assignment is approximately 90 days distributed over the period of 11 months from 1 February to 31 December 2025, to ensure that the publication captures the key stages of project development.