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Contact details

D. Fairchild Ruggles

Co-Director

Dept. of Landscape Architecture

101 Temple Hoyne Buell Hall, MC-620
Champaign, IL 61820

Phone: (217) 333-0176

Fax: (217) 333-0176

Email: dfr1@illinois.edu

Helaine Silverman

Co-Director

Dept. of Anthropology

109 Davenport Hall, MC-148
Urbana, IL 61801

Phone: (217) 333-3616

Fax: (217) 244-3490

Email: helaine@illinois.edu

© 2003 The Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois

CHAMP Visiting Scholars

 

Dr. Haiyi Zhao (Northwest University, Xi’An, China) holds a law degree as well as a doctorate in economics. She was a visiting Freeman Fellow at the University of Illinois in AY 2007-08, during which time she participated actively in CHAMP and audited a range of cultural heritage and museum courses. She also presented several fascinating papers about the management of Xi’An’s historic district. Among the various projects she has conducted in China are the design of a legal system, composed of state legislations and nongovernmental civil regulations concerning cultural heritage management. She has compared the tangible and intangible aspects of cultural heritage manifested in Xi’An’s Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Islam Temple, focusing on the outcomes of conservation. The comparison is interesting because Big Wild Goose Pagoda falls under state legislation, whereas the Islam Temple mostly relies on the nongovernmental civil regulations of the local Muslim population. She also has initiated research in the Yunnan province of southwest China, which is home to many Chinese minorities. She is working with minority group representatives who are promoting tourism development of heritage sites in their hometowns. The introduction of such has caused various serious changes in traditional culture, faith, ethics living style, family relations, etc. Heritage development has aroused serious controversy and even conflict between development companies and local people, and within the local communities themselves. Dr. Zhao’s long-term research links cultural heritage and law. She is interested in heritage protection from economic and social perspectives, with particular attention to the impact of cultural heritage tourism development on communities, and their property and other rights as stakeholders. She has developed concepts about allocation and about managing rights, transferring rights, excluding rights, and accessing rights. Her goal has been to design an appropriate property rights allocation system for Chinese heritage. She is also interested in the positive and negative aspects of UNESCO on conserving and protecting Chinese heritage.

 

Haiyi Zhao and Helaine Silverman in Xi’An (July 2008)