The Chair of Technoscience Studies mourns the loss of Professor Dr. Marie-Theres Albert.

Prof. Dr. Marie-Theres Albert was co-founder of the Master's programme in World Heritage Studies, established the PhD programme in Heritage Studies, and managed both with great care. Her appointment as UNESCO Chair in Heritage Studies supported her vision and enabled her to combine academic research, international politics, and the development of scientific excellence in the field of  Heritage Studies in an unprecedented way. The concept of heritage studies that she initiated is taken up and continued at our chair. We consider the exploration of cultural and, in particular, technical heritage to be a genuine form of relational thinking. IIt manifests itself in creative practices within the respective historical context, and thus in strategies for adaptation and further development in response to the respective cultural and natural environments.

After her retirement, Prof. Marie-Theres Albert founded the Institute Heritage Studies in 2012, which developed into a research centre where concepts of heritage were further developed in theory and practice. This work is now being continued by our colleague Anca Claudia Prodan, together with Claudia Grünberg, the current deputy director.

Both have been working closely with Prof. Marie-Theres Albert for nearly twenty years. Anca Claudia Prodan is continuing her work on heritage in her postdoctoral research at the Chair of Technoscience Studies, thus taking up a new direction of research on the relationship between heritage protection and technological innovation. We are grateful for the impetus Marie-Theres Albert has given to our research and will continue to incorporate her ideas into our projects.