The Centre for Global Heritage and Development is one of the joint multidisciplinary centres of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It initiates, stimulates and facilitates interdisciplinary and innovative research on heritage in its past, present and future social context. The social importance of heritage is becoming increasingly and often painfully clear: heritage is an issue in war and disaster zones, tourism, urban and rural development and in relationships with the former colonial world. Heritage studies in the 21st century call for a new approach, a partnership between archaeology, the social and political sciences, the humanities, legal studies, the technical and natural sciences and such disciplines as urban and landscape planning. The Centre for Global Heritage and Development uses its interdisciplinary and inter-university status to go beyond the traditional study of heritage, by actively focusing on how heritage relates to cultural, social and environmental developments.