Skip to main content
The Australian National University
Centre for Heritage & Museum Studies
ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
Centre for Heritage & Museum Studies ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
 CHMS

CHMS

  • Home
  • People
    • Director
    • Academics
    • Associates
    • Professional staff
    • Current HDR students
    • Graduated HDR students
  • Events
    • Heritage and Museums Seminar Series
    • Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Development Series
    • Conferences
      • Past conferences
  • News
  • Projects
    • Current projects
    • Past projects
    • Association of Critical Heritage Studies
      • Conference
      • Members
      • Discussion and Research List
      • Links
      • Contacts
  • Publications
    • Major publications
    • Museums in Focus
    • International Journal of Heritage Studies
    • Key Issues in Cultural Heritage
  • Contact us
 Related Sites

Related Sites

  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
  • Research School of Humanities and the Arts
  • Australian National Internships Program

Administrator

Breadcrumb

HomeNewsMaking Places Sacred: New Book By Dr Yujie Zhu
Making Places Sacred: New book by Dr Yujie Zhu

Making Places Sacred (Cambridge University Press)

Wednesday 26 March 2025

Yujie Zhu (Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies) and Matt Tomlinson (School of Culture, History and Language, CAP) have published a new short book with Cambridge University Press titled Making Places Sacred. The book explores the dynamics of sacred place-making across different cultural and religious contexts.

Although claims to sacredness are often linked to the power of a distant past, the work of making places sacred is creative, novel, renewable, and reversible. This book highlights how sacred space is newly made. It is often associated with blood, death, and geographic anomalies, yet no single feature determines sacred associations. People make space sacred by connecting with 'extrahuman' figures – the ancestors, spirits, and gods that people attempt to interact with in every society. These connections can be concentrated in people's bodies, yet bodies are particularly vulnerable to loss. The book also examines the multidimensional and multisensory dimensions of sacred space, which can be made almost anywhere, including online, but can also be unmade. Unmaking sacred space can entail new sacralization. New and minority religions in particular provide excellent sites for studying sacredness as a value, raising the reliably productive question: sacred for whom?

The book is available for download here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/making-places-sacred/72D06C95979528CCAFF7A13C03613F4A

Back to topicon-arrow-up-solid
The Australian National University
 
APRU
IARU
 
edX
Group of Eight Member

Acknowledgement of Country

The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.


Contact ANUCopyrightDisclaimerPrivacyFreedom of Information

+61 2 6125 5111 The Australian National University, Canberra

TEQSA Provider ID: PRV12002 (Australian University) CRICOS Provider Code: 00120C ABN: 52 234 063 906