Presented in person and online - more details below.

Making Places Sacred: New Articulations of Place and Power

Join us for a discussion of Matt Tomlinson and Yujie Zhu's new book, Making Places Sacred. In it, Matt and Yujie examine how sacred space is made in projects that are creative, novel, renewable, and reversible. Sacred space is often associated with blood, death, and geographic anomalies, yet no single feature determines sacred associations. People make space sacred by connecting with “extrahuman” figures – the ancestors, spirits, and gods that people attempt to interact with in arguably every society. These connections can be concentrated in people’s bodies, yet bodies are particularly vulnerable to loss. We examine the multidimensional and multisensory dimensions of sacred space, which can be made almost anywhere, including online, but can also be unmade. Unmaking sacred space can entail new sacralization. New and minority religions in particular provide excellent sites for studying sacredness as a value, raising the reliably productive question: sacred for whom?

Speakers: 

Matt Tomlinson is Director of the School of Culture, History and Language and Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University. He studies ritual, language, and politics in Oceania and Australia. His recent books include Let the Dead Speak: Spiritualism in Australia (with Andrew Singleton; 2025) and God Is Samoan: Dialogues between Culture and Theology in the Pacific (2020).

Yujie Zhu is Associate Professor at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. Yujie obtained his Ph.D. in anthropology from Heidelberg University, Germany. His research focuses on the cultural politics of the past within diverse heritage and memory spaces. He is the author and editor of 8 books including recent monographs China’s Heritage through History (2024), Heritage Tourism (2021), Heritage Politics in China (2020), and Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China (2018). He served as the vice-president of the International Association of Critical Heritage Studies (2014-2020) and Deputy-chair of Anthropology Tourism Committee of the IUAES (2013-2021).

Location: Haydon-Allen building 22, Rm 2177

Zoom: 
https://anu.zoom.us/j/87802807372?pwd=fbu3BD3PcmaIXpt3VU4srkznBENqkG.1
Meeting ID: 878 0280 7372
Password: 277792