Mr Tim CURTIS

• Section Chief, Intangible Cultural Heritage Section, UNESCO

• Opening Remarks
• Session 4: Chair

Dr Tim Curtis was appointed Chief of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section of UNESCO and Secretary of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in January 2016. He has been working in the field of culture in international contexts for nearly twenty years firstly as a cultural anthropologist and then for UNESCO on numerous international programmes related to culture in the fields of heritage, cultural industries, cultural policies and culture and development. From 2000 until 2002, he worked as a consultant for UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Section at UNESCO, primarily on the design and implementation of intangible heritage projects as well as on the launching of the UNESCO Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2001. In 2003, he joined the Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) Project in the UNESCO Science Sector, before moving to Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania in 2004, where, as the Programme Specialist for Culture, he oversaw UNESCO’s Culture Programme in Tanzania, Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles. In 2009, he was appointed as head of the Culture Unit in UNESCO Bangkok office, with the responsibility to coordinate and implement UNESCO's Culture Programme in South East Asia.

Dr Curtis received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, where he wrote a thesis entitled ‘Talking about Place’ on the relationship between oral history and place amongst the Na’hai speakers of Malakula in the Republic of Vanuatu.