Rate My Professor colin sterling

Dr. Colin Sterling is an Assistant Professor of Heritage, Museums and the Environment in the Department of Arts and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he joined in January 2021. He holds a BA (Hons) in Ancient History and Archaeology from the University of Manchester (2006, First Class), an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies from UCL Institute of Archaeology (2008, Distinction), and a PhD from UCL Institute of Archaeology (2015) titled 'Rethinking Heritage and Photography: Comparative Case Studies from Cyprus and Cambodia.' Prior appointments include UKRI Early Career Leadership Fellow and post-doctoral researcher at UCL Institute of Archaeology, Project Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects Library and Collections (2016-2017), and researcher at Barker Langham (2009-2018). Sterling is an interdisciplinary researcher, writer, and teacher specializing in heritage, museums, art, and ecology. His research explores critical-creative heritage practice at the intersections of critical heritage studies, museum studies, and environmental humanities, addressing stewardship, preservation, inheritance, archive, sustainability, climate change, just transition, posthumanism in conservation, reparative and spectral heritage interpretation, and participatory action research with curators, artists, designers, and conservators.

In teaching, Sterling has coordinated Master's courses in Heritage & Memory Studies, Museum Studies, and Art & Performance Research Studies; developed electives like Contemporary Art and the Anthropocene; and co-coordinated the year-long ART and RESEARCH course with Rietveld Academie. He serves as Programme Coordinator for the BA Global Arts, Culture and Politics since March 2023 and Coordinator of the Artistic Research Research Group in the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. Named Lecturer of the Year for the Faculty of Humanities in 2022, he has secured funding as Principal Investigator or co-PI for projects including NWA-ORC JUST ART (2025, Work Package Lead), Horizon Europe PITCH on petroculture and green transitions (2023, co-PI), NWO Cultivating Museum Ecologies Otherwise (2023, PI), and AHRC New Trajectories in Curatorial Experience Design (2019, PI with follow-on 2022). As co-editor of Museums & Social Issues since 2021, he guest-edited a special volume on Repair (2023). Key publications include edited volume Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2020); 'Reparative Museology and Its Limits' (Social Text, 2025); 'Museums after progress' (Museums & Social Issues, 2024); 'Rethinking Museums for the Climate Emergency' (in Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe, UCL Press, 2023); 'Ghosts of solid air: contested heritage and augmented reality in public space' (International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2025); and 'Documents and Records' (in Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies, UCL Press, 2024).