Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage | Theory, Practice, Policy, Ethics

Welcome

Welcome to the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage home page. This project represents an international, interdisciplinary collaboration among more than 50 scholars and 25 partnering organizations embarking on an unprecedented and timely investigation of intellectual property (IP) issues in cultural heritage that represent emergent local and global interpretations of culture, rights, and knowledge. Our objectives are:

to document the diversity of principles, interpretations, and actions arising in response to IP issues in cultural heritage worldwide;
to analyze the many implications of these situations;
to generate more robust theoretical understandings as well as exemplars of good practice; and
to make these findings available to stakeholders—from Aboriginal communities to professional organizations to government agencies—to develop and refine their own theories, principles, policies and practices.

We invite you to explore our website and to keep track of this project as it develops.

Natasha Lyons

Collaboration with communities in Canada’s far north has helped shape past and present research of Dr. Natasha Lyons (pictured above with Bandit). Natasha, our first Postdoctoral Associate, is also co-developer of one of the first IPinCH case studies, which examines intellectual property issues affecting the Inuvialuit, including access and information sharing. With community and institutional partners, the project will connect Inuvialuit elders from Canada’s Western Arctic with cultural items housed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Natasha’s prior collaborative research with the Inuvialuit community included her Ph.D. dissertation on the building of a critical Indigenous archaeology. She has also collaborated with the Padlimiut of Arviat on the western shores of Hudson Bay on an oral history and mapping project, and continues to work with both communities on heritage projects with intellectual property concerns.

Natasha currently holds a SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship at Simon Fraser University. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary and an M.A. from Simon Fraser University. She says she has already benefited from interaction with IPinCH scholars through the case study application process, and hopes to contribute data to Working Group questions on research ethics, access, and best practices.