The 19th TICCIH World Congress was held in the mining town Kiruna in northernmost Sweden, August 25 – 30, 2025. The title of the congress was “Heritage in action: Legacies of industry in future making” and focused on tensions and controversies surrounding industrial heritage and its relation to wider tensions in present day society. Themes ranged from issues regarding sustainability, inclusion and colonialism to future generations, popular culture and AI.
The congress location was Kiruna, a small town in the Swedish Arctic, with a rich industrial history. The town was officially established the year 1900 as part of large project to extract vast iron mineralization’s in the region. However, people have inhabited the region for thousands of years. Steel making based on bog-ores in the area dates back 2000 years, while mining and early modern metals production dates back to the 17th century. The mine in Kiruna is still in operation and is said to be the largest underground Iron ore mine in the world. The town and the region are also subject to a new wave of industrialization including rare earth elements mining and the production of Co2 free steel. This development takes place in lands where industry compete with traditional land uses of indigenous people and national minorities, such as Saami reindeer herders and Tornedalians, which causes growing tensions about land use and the future.
Congress excursions included visits to the LKAB mine in Kiruna, to Abisko and the Ore Railway to Narvik, to the AITIK mine in Gällivare, and to the Sami museum in Jukkasjärvi.
The 19th TICCIH Congress in Kiruna was organized by Luleå University of Technology in collaboration with TICCIH International and the TICCIH sections in Sweden and Norway, the Swedish National Heritage Board, the municipality of Kiruna and a range of leading actors within industry and civil society in the Scandinavian north.
**
Marion Steiner participated in her function as President Elect and was officially inaugurated as TICCIH’s new President in the General Assembly in the afternoon of Friday, August 29, 2025.
Also, on Friday morning she gave a keynote talk titled “Connecting People and Places: Industrial Heritage for Peace,” and on Wednesday in a speech titled “Global Networks of Power: Imperial legacies of German urban electrification in Latin America” she presented key results of her ANID-FONDECYT Iniciación research project 11230957.
Pamela Fuentes and Aulikki Pollak, research partners in that same Fondecyt project and long-standing collaborators in ESPI Lab Valparaíso, also participated in the TICCIH World Congress in Kiruna, with presentations titled “The Protection of Industrial Heritage through a Community Museum” and “Exploring Cultural Identities in the Former CCU Industrial Neighborhood in Limache, Chile,” respectively.
On Wednesday evening, in collaboration with the Municipality of Kiruna and coordinated by Felicia Söderqvist from Luleå Technical University, Marion Steiner together with Sofia Lagerlöf Mättää co-chaired the Public lectures session “Mining and Me – Communities in action in Kiruna and way beyond” in the Kiruna Municipal Library. The lectures were provided by Esperanza Rock and Guilherme Pozzer and followed by a lively conversation panel in which also participated Clara Nyström and Moulshri Joshi.