excellent chance for students to extend their learning while also helping an earthquake-stricken population. Drawing on her extensive connections and experience in heritage conservation, she tailored a field trip that fulfilled two key components of the one-year MSc programme – Students in the Master of Science (MSc) in Conservation programme in the Faculty of Architecture are contributing to the protection of heritage sites that are under threat in the region. In so doing, they are also developing contacts and networks for their future careers. Alarm bells rang for the global heritage community, and UNESCO’s Heritage Emergency Fund (HEF) was mobilised to initiate conservation efforts. But a bell of opportunity also rang for Dr Linda Shetabi. Dr Shetabi, Director of the MSc Conservation programme, saw an The Historic City of Vigan in the Philippines, established in the 16th century, is one of the best preserved planned Spanish colonial towns in Asia. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, it experienced two powerful earthquakes in 2022 that severely damaged its buildings, threatening lives and livelihoods. Training Guardians of Heritage Students from HKU and the University of Northern Philippines collaborating in Vigan to conduct surveys and collect data. HKU Bulletin | Nov 2025 Teaching and Learning 32 33 Dr Shetabi and 18 students travelled to Vigan in 2024 for one week, where they collaborated with undergraduate architecture students from the University of Northern Philippines to develop digitised floor plans for 15 historic buildings and a preliminary analysis of the damage. They also collected oral histories and helped update a manual for owners on how to maintain their ancestral homes. One of the HKU students was Limiao Huang, who came to the programme after practising as an architect in Shanghai for more than a decade and finding she was more interested in protecting older buildings than building new ones. “The practical training we did in the Philippines was a great experience for me because I realised that we were actually helping the people there. I worked on a beautiful ancestral hall that had been partially destroyed by typhoons and the earthquake, where several families lived. They could not afford to restore the building, which astonished me. I wanted to help,” she said. Her documentation of the site has provided a record for future conservation work. Ms Huang herself, who graduated in 2024, has also committed more fully to architectural conservation, joining the programme as a research assistant and now preparing to pursue a PhD. The field trip to Thailand was under less urgent, but nonetheless threatening, conditions. It focussed on the impacts of severe weather patterns on heritage. A pivotal goal of Dr Shetabi’s approach to heritage education is to integrate sustainability and the impacts of climate change and extreme weather patterns on heritage sites. (She co-authored the ICOMOS publication Policy Guidance for Heritage and Development Actors, which considers sustainability in heritage conservation.) mandatory 72-hour practical training and a visit to a World Heritage Site – and provided ‘in-kind’ support to the HEF in the form of documentation of damaged buildings. The offer was welcomed by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Philippines and UNESCO. “This was an opportunity to not only fulfil programme requirements, but also for students to make meaningful contributions towards conservation,” she said. The experience laid the groundwork for student expeditions to Thailand in spring 2025 and to Korea this academic year. Students and academic partners in Thailand’s Chiang Mai investigated the impacts of recent floods to understand how policy priorities, heritage conservation and stakeholder requirements are negotiated in complex historic urban landscapes. A similar theme is being followed in the trip to Korea to explore the management of World Heritage Sites within metropolitan landscapes, where historic remains and contemporary demands for sustainability jostle and compete for resources. “One aim of our programme is to empower students to be advocates and go out there to change policy and practise, and be part of the solution,” Dr Shetabi said. “We want them to speak to stakeholders and recognise informal arrangements so that when they talk to government leaders, good practices can be continued and supported by legislation and policy – something Environmental challenges Practical work not always seen at World Heritage Sites, where local populations may be prevented from continuing with their traditional practices.” Another aim is to connect students with people and networks that could be useful for their future careers. Students regularly meet experts in class reviews, as well as on excursions where they interact with practitioners and government officials. In Korea, they will meet with World Heritage Site managers, government officials and practitioners. These are golden opportunities for networking with the regional heritage community, and Dr Shetabi instructs her students to treat such encounters as a job interview. She also wants them to keep sight of the purpose of their field. “Heritage conservation is not just something theoretical that students read about in a book, or something that provides a beautiful backdrop for an Instagram photograph. Heritage is integrated into people’s lives – it’s important to their sense of self, their identity, their understanding of where they are in the world,” she said. One aim of our programme is to empower students to be advocates and go out there to change policy and practise, and be part of the solution. Dr Linda Shetabi
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