The monuments, sites, and traditions we call “heritage” are more than passive mirrors to the past. Through careful acts of selection, preservation, and mobilization, heritage represents ways for societies to affect or resist political change. In recent years, heritage has been mobilized in fierce disputes linked to processes of political polarization, from riots over statues in the United States to the razing of architecture in India and Bangladesh. Such disputes can tear down the social fabric that holds societies together, but they may also give rise to desired changes that repairs and strengthens that fabric. To understand the role of heritage in such processes represents a complex interdisciplinary challenge that affects how we will come to see the past, the political present, and ourselves tomorrow. With case studies from around the world, the research program "Polarization and the Past" seeks to deepen our understanding of the complex dynamics between heritage and polarization that characterize liberal democracies of our time.

Adam Hjorthén is Associate Professor of history and Senior Lecturer in North American Studies at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS) at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Tania Islas Weinstein is Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University.

Jennifer McCoy is Regent’s Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as Research Affiliate at CEU’s Democracy Institute in Budapest.

Elisabeth Niklasson is Lecturer in Archaeology and Director of the Cultural Heritage Programme at University of Aberdeen.

Tahmina Rahman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rollins College.

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