Editor’s note:
Welcome to a new format for CIfA News. This feed for longer ‘blog’ content will enable a different type of comment on sector issues. We may publish articles by members, or explore content relating to CIfA activities or events, such as our Thought Leadership sessions.
To start 2026, the first set of blogs are devoted to last year’s Conference Plenary on ‘Wicked Problems’, beginning with an introduction from John Schofield.
This set of blogs draws on the comment cards that attendees at Conference submitted which reflected on the content of the session, and the ideas of John’s book, which is currently nominated for a Current Archaeology award.
Last month, I was invited to the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) Cottbus-Senftenberg, to deliver some teaching and a public lecture, all on the subject of my 2024 book, Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice. The teaching, to a Masters and PhD cohort comprising architectural conservation, World Heritage, and heritage management students, involved a seminar, and a presentation by last year’s Masters cohort on their team projects (within a new ‘Wicked Problems’ module) which set out to design and create small wins relative to a specific wicked problem, which each team chose for themselves. I was inspired by their ambition, their creativity, and the fact that all of these projects delivered on their promise. The public lecture was entitled ‘Wicked for Good’ (after the movie of the same name) and played on the tensions that exist between (public) good and evil (this being the term often used to help define the wickedness inherent within wicked problems.
It seems that at Cottbus, an institution renowned internationally for its expertise in architecture and heritage conservation, wicked problems are becoming integral to its teaching, helping to create a new generation of scholars and practitioners who recognise how their heritage work can change the world for the better. My own university, the University of York, is a ‘University for Public Good’, and we do teach wicked problems at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, albeit framed differently, as what we refer to as ‘global challenges’.
I have been pleased to accept many invitations to address audiences about the subject covered in my ‘Wicked Problems’ book over the past two years, including the 2025 CIfA Conference in Birmingham, where Wicked Problems formed the basis of an engaging plenary session. The session was co-ordinated by Andrea Bradley, with speakers including CIfA’s Kate Geary and Sadie Watson from MOLA. A review of the session has now been published. The ideas generated in this session form the basis of this and the other blog posts that will follow in this series.
Over the past two years, I have questioned why these ostensibly bleak sessions have been so in demand. The reason I think is simple. It is because I don’t focus on the wicked problems which ultimately (and by definition) are unresolvable and which present a dire and existential threat to planetary health - climate change, environmental pollution, conflict, injustice. Instead I focus on the small wins that make a difference on a local scale, and which nudge away at the problem, often in significant ways. This small wins approach stems from psychology, creating a positive environment around the idea of beneficial change, helping people to feel better about themselves (as individuals and as a society) as agents of change.
Over a year since the book’s publication, I have been overwhelmed by the positive response, both to the book, and to the central idea that archaeology and heritage practice can generate these small wins, and that even the smallest of small wins can be genuinely meaningful, whether for people or the environment, or both. I have also been encouraged by responses to the book’s call for archaeology to be better integrated with other subjects, and to be more creative in its scope, and more ambitious in its aspirations. People like the idea that sometimes we need direct action, but that sometimes policy entrepreneurship is a better response, and that we need to prepare students to take these important roles. I am also pleased to see people agreeing that we need a sector that is focused more on the problems and how our work can help resolve them, rather than creating yet more data, for data’s sake. I guess, ultimately, my call is for a ‘(Wicked) Problem-oriented Archaeology’ and heritage sector. I have yet to hear anyone disagree with that.
Over the coming weeks on this blog, several reflections on themes and issues that arose from the consideration of Wicked Problems at CIfA’s conference in Birmingham in 2025 will be published. I am grateful for those who have spent time thinking about my framework for articulating these challenges within the context of the archaeological profession, and across the breadth of CIfA’s membership and the activities of CIfA as an organisation.