Julian Schellong

Constructing and Reconstructing Universal Heritage, c. 1945-1990 (PhD project, working title)

My PhD project investigates the ideals and practices of heritage conservation in an international context. After the Second World War, conservation and the notion of heritage have undergone a transformation from the national to the universal. Conservators proclaimed that monuments and cultural artifacts were expressions of a universal humanity and belonged not to nations but to the global population. They established new international institutions (such as UNESCO or ICOMOS), professional principles (such as the Charter of Venice), and schemes of cultural bureaucracy (such as the World Heritage Program) committed to the ideal of universality.

The project analyzes the construction of 'universal heritage' with its actors, motifs, political contexts, and ramifications. By illuminating how conservators shaped the idea of a global past, how this idea was implemented, and how in certain domains it remained exclusive to the Western World, the project contributes to cultural history of globalization.

Four case studies are examined, each focusing on the comprehensive reconstruction of monuments and the narratives of the past they represent. One case is on the reconstructions of monuments in Vienna in 1945 for which the Allied military administration and the Bundesdenkmalamt collaborated. The second studies the translocation of the an-cient Abu Simbel temples in the Nubian desert under UNESCO's auspices. The third is on reconstructions of a small Italian town after an earthquake with the method of anastylosis. In the last chapter I study how petitions for restitutions of African artworks taken by colonial powers were dismissed by Western museums.

The project draws from historical material from ICOMOS, UNESCO, ICCROM, the Archivio Piero Gazzola, municipal, and state archives.

The Commodification of CO2. Environmental and Knowledge History of International Climate Policy, c. 1970-2000 (working title)

Carbon dioxide absorbs electromagnetic radiation such as heat. Thus, the gas heats the terrestrial atmosphere–the so-called greenhouse effect. In the Kyoto Protocol from 1997, the United Nations adopted a market-based mechanism to solve the problem of anthropogenic global warming. In markets for emission rights, producers of greenhouse gases were made to pay for their emissions and thus had incentives to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The international community made CO2 a scarce commodity that could be paid for and traded internationally.

The project seeks to explain how and why scientists and the international community have designed and enforced markets for emission rights. It examines the historical context that enabled the commodification of CO2 and identifies the interests that played into this policy. It also seeks to understand how carbon trading worked in practice. The project analyzes the arguments, political constellations, and techniques by which the market-based climate governance was conceived, enacted, and implemented.

My hypothesis is that the commodification of CO2 was shaped by a friction of knowledge and power: knowledge about the atmosphere and geophysics as much as about economic theory, markets, and business management. Climate policy decisions conflated this knowledge with geopolitical goals and leverage in international relations. It was only when CO2 was conceived from different academic disciplines and subordinated to political interests that the substance could become a globally traded commodity.

Julian Schellong

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