Effective cultural property protection is built in times of peace – through preparedness, clear priorities, and trained collaboration. In an emergency, defined protection objectives, responsibilities, and operating protocols enable sound decisions under time pressure.

This master’s program provides an interdisciplinary, practice-oriented education addressing the diverse challenges of protecting and preserving cultural heritage. It focuses on human-made threats – such as armed conflict, illicit trafficking, and vandalism – as well as natural hazards and climate-related risks.
From risk analysis to decision-making: risk assessment, preventive conservation, and collections management are interlinked with emergency planning and evacuation – combined with leadership, staff operations, and crisis communication in realistic crisis and disaster scenarios. International legal frameworks and standards provide the overarching context. Topics such as cultural landscapes and climate change, resilience and adaptation strategies, as well as heritage interpretation and digital tools broaden the professional perspective and support operational implementation.

The program is aimed at professionals and decision-makers in museums, archives, libraries, conservation authorities, environmental and cultural landscape management, public administration, emergency and security organizations, and international institutions.
The degree enhances career prospects in national and international cultural property protection, crisis and disaster management, collections management and preventive conservation, and in interface and coordination roles between cultural heritage institutions and emergency responders.

The "Cultural Property Protection, MSc (CE)" is obtained through a flexible combination of stackable short programs (Certificate Programs & Micro-Credential Programs), which are fully credited in terms of content and finances, enabling flexible, part time study planning.