HDR students from the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies (CHMS) presented their research at the international conference Urban Heritage Transformation: Preservation, Production and Reproduction, held in August 2025 at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China.

Zhengbing He, Xiaochun Ma, Guohong Li, and Zhengrong Zhang joined ANU alumna Dr Karma Kong in presenting work on a wide range of themes, including:

• Memory politics and urban policy
• History and heritage in urban contexts
• War memory and its afterlives
• Indigenous family histories and museums

Their participation reflects the strong contribution of ANU’s emerging scholars to international debates on urban heritage, at a time when cities worldwide face complex challenges of preservation, change, and creativity in the 21st century.

Alongside these presentations, Associate Professor Yujie Zhu delivered one of the conference’s keynote lectures on values, practices, and transnational dialogues of urban heritage. His keynote reinforced ANU’s role as a leader in heritage and museum studies, while also highlighting the Centre’s commitment to fostering the next generation of scholars.