Preserving Intangible Heritage: Celebrating the Success of Our Cultural Dialogue and Documentation Initiatives
Throughout 2025, Swiss International University (SIU) proudly advanced its commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 11 by actively contributing to the preservation and documentation of intangible cultural heritage. Driven by our academic division, ISB Academy Dubai, we have dedicated substantial resources to safeguarding traditional knowledge, languages, customs, and practices—particularly those at risk of being displaced in rapidly urbanizing environments.
A cornerstone of our 2025 heritage initiatives was our highly successful ongoing collaboration with the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Centre for Cultural Understanding (SMCCU) in Dubai. Together, we hosted a series of interactive public events designed to record and celebrate Emirati traditions, oral histories, and cultural values. These events went beyond our student body, opening their doors to the wider community to ensure cultural preservation through shared experience, active dialogue, and rigorous documentation.
Community Impact Event: The 2025 Emirati Oral History & Heritage Week
To solidify this commitment, SIU’s ISB Academy Dubai and the SMCCU co-hosted the "Emirati Oral History & Heritage Week" in November 2025. Through free public guided heritage tours, live storytelling sessions, and communal traditional meals, local residents, expats, and international students came together to experience living cultural expressions. A major highlight of the week involved SIU students conducting structured, recorded interviews with Emirati elders to carefully document their personal histories, regional dialects, and traditional knowledge.
To ensure these invaluable cultural assets are permanently safeguarded and globally accessible, SIU partnered with our academic publishing house, the Unveiling Seven Continents Yearbook Journal (U7Y Journal). The interviews, historical narratives, and cultural analyses gathered during the 2025 Heritage Week were systematically transcribed, archived into our institutional heritage program, and published as a special open-access U7Y cultural supplement, free for researchers and the public worldwide.
At Swiss International University, we believe that preserving intangible heritage is not only about protecting the past—it is an active investment in intercultural understanding, shared identity, and the building of sustainable, resilient communities for the future.
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