Marina Djabbarzade

Heritage Management Specialist

A Courtauld Institute graduate, Marina’s initial career centered on museum collection management including: registration, conservation, organization of travelling exhibitions and publications.  During the 1990s she worked as a curatorial consultant for several institutions such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, Lugano and Tibet House, New York.  She also held managerial positions for a number of cultural institutions throughout the world, advising on administrative, organizational and operational activities.

Working increasingly with developing countries led her to further investigate their institutional needs, as well as to explore further opportunities for utilizing cultural resources as an engine for socio-economic development. She is currently consulting for the World Bank in Washington D.C. where she has developed, supervised and evaluated Cultural Heritage projects worldwide for over a decade.  To quantify the benefits of cultural investments, she has conducted Contingent Valuation and Economic Impact Evaluation studies.  Recently she has focused on various means to increase the sustainability of investments with a particular interest in mobilizing multiple stakeholders, developing public private partnerships and engaging local communities at project sites to ensure equitable outcomes.  She is now working closely with project managers to develop new tools for monitoring and evaluating heritage projects, as well as to devise standards for an integrated approach to cultural heritage in World Bank projects across different sectors.

She has contributed to numerous World Bank papers and policy documents on issues related to cultural heritage ranging from sustainable tourism to cultural industries development; the social dimensions of culture and the integration of culture in socioeconomic development. She also drafted a background paper for the 2009 UNESCO Cultural Diversity Report.