Coimbra Exhibition

Intro – Virtual Exhibition

Coimbra Group Universities are important heritage institutions within their cities, regions, and countries and in their European dimensions. Throughout their history, they have been stalwarts of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Today heritage constitutes an important resource for cultural identity, a sense of belonging and social cohesion. Coimbra Group Universities have a special responsibility for preserving and transmitting as well as articulating and interpreting cultural heritage and its manifold cultural, societal and economic benefits for society.

The working group Heritage fosters and promotes the academic heritage of the Coimbra Group Universities, comprising museums, libraries, historic collections, historic buildings, academic rituals and special practices.

35 universities followed the call of the University of Edinburgh to collaborate in creating a virtual exhibition, which highlights the shared European cultural heritage of the COIMBRA members.

This virtual exhibition was created on occasion of the Coimbra Group Annual Conference 2017, held in Edinburgh from June 7 to June 9, 2017. Inspired by the Scottish Year of 2017, “History, Heritage and Archaeology,” as well as preceding the “European Cultural Heritage Year 2018”, the theme of the conference was “Universities and the Future of Cultural Heritage.”

The virtual exhibition highlights the collections of the Coimbra Group Universities in a celebration of shared European cultural heritage and, as such, is a first step towards widening participation on a national and international stage.

Bringing together objects from academic collections all over Europe in a shared online presentation is of great benefit for a comparative glance at selected holdings of the Coimbra partners and opens the way for an even more dynamic platform for data exchange, and for better access and awareness of our abundant heritage collections.

Enjoy browsing through the rich collections of the Coimbra group universities and discover how these fascinating objects travelled connected European Universities – even before the Coimbra Group was founded.

Dr. Marie Luisa Allemeyer, Chair of the Working Group Heritage