Faculty of Arts and Education

School of Humanities and Social Sciences


   Prof. William Logan

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Position Emeritus Professor
Email william.logan@deakin.edu.au
Area School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Phone +61 3 924 43911
Campus Burwood
Location (Room D1.13)
Role and profile Professor William (Bill) Logan is a geographer specialising as both scholar and practitioner in the field of heritage studies. This interest in cultural heritage conservation grew out of his involvement in the resident action movement in inner Melbourne in the early 1970s and has expanded to cover teaching, research and consulting on heritage issues, mainly in Australia and Asia. He completed a doctorate at Monash University in 1981 in the field of urban geography with a thesis focused on the housing, planning and heritage conservation in inner Melbourne. This was published as ‘The Gentrification of Inner Melbourne: A Political Geography of Inner City Housing’ by the University of Queensland Press in 1985. He taught in the Department of Geography at the University of Melbourne in 1965-7 and 1971-3 and maintains a strong interest in the geography discipline. He was external member of the Geography Review Panel at Central Queensland University in 2004, and contributed the chapter ‘Reshaping the “Sunburnt Country”: Heritage and cultural politics in contemporary Australia’ to Roy Jones and Brian J. Shaw (eds) ‘Geographies of Australian Heritages’ published by Ashgate UK in 2007.

He has held numerous senior administrative positions, including Dean, in the higher education sector since 1971 and has been a professor since 1992. At Deakin University he was Research Director in the Faculty of Arts 1993-98. Professor Logan currently holds an Alfred Deakin Professorship and the UNESCO Chair of Heritage and Urbanism in the Faculty’s School of History, Heritage and Society. He is a member of Australia ICOMOS, the national committee of ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), based in Paris, and was the national president from 1999 to 2002. He has represented ICOMOS at international meetings in Japan and Korea. He has been a consultant to AusAID, the Australian Heritage Commission and Department of the Environment and Heritage, and the Victorian Department of Infrastructure, and he is a member of AusHeritage (including Board Member, 1998-9). He has been a member of the Heritage Council of Victoria since 2008 and chairs its Research and Investigations Committee.

Since 1986 he has been an International Expert for the UNESCO Division of Cultural Heritage in Paris, where his work has mainly been related to UNESCO's campaigns to safeguard World Heritage sites in Bangladesh, China, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. He has also acted for the UNESCO World Heritage Centre at expert meetings in Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Korea and contributed to its 'State of the World Heritage' Report (2005).
Teaching responsibilities Logan’s involvement with international and national heritage bodies has directly led to course innovations and research activities at Deakin University. Professor Logan introduced two courses in Vietnamese history and culture and instigated the development of an Asian Studies major. He led the establishment of the Cultural Heritage postgraduate program at Deakin in 2000. He also helped to develop postgraduate heritage courses at Silpakorn University in Bangkok and the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. He currently supervises PhD candidates in various aspects of Cultural Heritage.
Research interests He was Director of Deakin’s Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific (CHCAP), a UNESCO-endorsed research and training centre, from 2000 to 2009. He was awarded the Deakin University Researcher of the Year Award in 2002 and was made an Alfred Deakin Professor in 2004 for his contribution to the university's research profile. His research record includes numerous Australian Research Council and other grants, three recent books on heritage in the Asian region ('Hanoi: Biography of a City' , UNSW Press, University of Washington Press, & Select Publishing, Sydney/Seattle/Singapore, 2000,; 'The Disappearing "Asian" City: Protecting Asia's Urban Heritage in a Globalizing World', Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 2002; and 'Vientiane: Transformation of a Lao Landscape', with Marc Askew & Colin Long, Routledge, London, 2006), articles in refereed and professional journals, and conference papers.

He was a member of the international advisory boards of the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster, UK. and is a member of the editorial boards of the ‘International Journal of Heritage Studies’ and ‘Historic Environment’. He initiated the ‘Key Issues in Cultural Heritage’ series published by Routledge UK and is series co-editor with Laurajane Smith. He was co-editor of and contributed chapters to two volumes in the series: ‘Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with Difficult Heritage’ (with Keir Reeves, 2009) and ‘Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights: Intersections in Theory and Practice’ (with Michele Langfield and Mairead Nic Craith, 2010).

Current research interests are:
Cultural heritage, especially heritage places and intangible heritage in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.
World Heritage.
Cultural diversity, heritage and human rights.
Urban planning history.
Vietnam's cultural history and heritage.
Current research projects Currently engaged in the following research projects:
(1) Australian Heritage Abroad: Managing Australia’s Extra-territorial War Heritage (ARC Discovery project 2010 – 2012, with J. Beaumont, A. Witcomb & B. Ziino)
(2) Vietnam: Heritage of a Nation (ARC Discovery project 2010 – 2011, with C. Long)
Service to the University,
discipline or community  		 Logan was an invited expert at the Consultative Meeting on Cultural Rights at the UN Human Rights Commission, Geneva, in February 2011 and gave the keynote presentation at the ‘Our Common Dignity: Towards Rights-Based World Heritage Management’ workshop conducted by Norway ICOMOS, the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in March 2011. He is currently part of an editorial committee currently preparing the papers from this workshop for publication in a special issue of the ‘International Journal of Heritage Studies’ in 2012.
Awards Deakin University Researcher of the Year 2002
Alfred Deakin Professorship 2004
Qualifications BA(Hons), PhD, Dip Ed
Memberships Australia ICOMOS (President 1999-2002)
International Council on Monuments and Sites
International Council on Museums
Research link View Deakin associated research data
Additional URLs

CHCAP website

Deakin University acknowledges the traditional land owners of present campus sites.

22nd April 2013