Presentation

The rationale for bringing together human rights' topic with cultural heritage studies comes directly from two internationally renowned sources of these concepts. Indeed, the crucial role played by culture and knowledge as a common basic ground for human development as well as a way to ensure freedom both individually and collectively is a conceptual relationship introduced in 1945 UNESCO Constitution (in the Constitution the basic relation between culture, education, and freedom is explicitly affirmed while implicitly underlining how critical thinking is a precondition for liberty), as well as in the UN definition of human development.

Human rights, in this perspective, are strictly related to the empowerment of cultural development and critical thinking, as the background of the ‘specialist in the Human Rights Based Approach’, oriented to the protection of the rights of those who are excluded and marginalized. In the same vein, cultural heritage is not limited to monuments and artworks in terms of indigenous and traditional knowledge. The recent inclusion of ‘world's natural and cultural heritage’ in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) has finally recognised it as a global issue.
For this reason, the I-CONTACT (International Cooperation On humaN righTs And interCultural heriTage) programme adopted the wording ‘intercultural heritage’ in order to emphasize the most open-minded and future-oriented way to intend the sense and role of cultures today: not as islands to be safeguarded but as doors and bridges to let ideas pass and be shared.

The programme offers intensive Workshops in collaboration with: World Bank Jobs Group, the Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development (EU DG DEVCO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, UNESCO International Traditional Knowledge Institute Florence.

The programme offers solid interdisciplinary and problem-oriented training to graduate students with diverse backgrounds who plan to work in the field of international cooperation and development.
It aims at broadening students’ conceptual and analytical abilities, equipping them with both academic and professional skills. The key objective is to enable students to manage global development projects in complex, multi-dimensional, and intercultural environments.
Close attention is paid to historical and geopolitical dynamics between the European Union and, the Central, Eastern European and East Asian countries, as well as in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
The course focuses on the evolving economic, political, social, and cultural issues related to international cooperation and development as well as on professional skills and methodological tools that are needed to critically address and tackle them.

​I-CONTACT Master Degree ​offers 2 curricula:

(A) A94 Protection of Human Rights and International Cooperation

(B) A95 International Cooperation on Intercultural Heritage​