Head, IUCN Heritage, Culture and Youth team

Tim Badman is Head of the Heritage, Culture and Youth team in IUCN, having served as Director of the IUCN World Heritage Programme since 2009 and Director of the IUCN Nature-Culture Initiative in 2019-2020.

Tim speaks for IUCN on all matters concerning the World Heritage Convention, including IUCN’s work on monitoring all listed natural sites and evaluating new proposals for World Heritage listing. He is chair of the IUCN World Heritage Panel and heads IUCN’s delegation at World Heritage Committee meetings. Since 2019, Tim has developed closer links between the Nature and Culture sectors through the Nature-Culture Initiative, including through the World Heritage Leadership Programme jointly run by ICCROM and IUCN with support from Norway. Since 2022 as Head of the newly formed Heritage, Culture and Youth team, he also oversees IUCN's work on Sports for Nature, the Urban Alliance, and its Youth strategy.

Tim joined IUCN having worked as team leader of the Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site, UK. This role culminated in inscription of the site on the World Heritage List in 2001, and the subsequent development of the World Heritage programme on-site. He has been involved in many World Heritage site evaluation and monitoring issues globally. Tim also speaks for IUCN on the special challenges of conserving geological sites, including those sites that protect the most exceptional fossil remains of life on Earth.

Senior Adviser on World Heritage

Peter Shadie is IUCN's Senior Adviser on World Heritage, based in IUCN headquarters in Gland, Switzerland. He served as Ad-Interim Director of the IUCN World Heritage Programme for two years in 2019-2020. Through the period 2000 to 2017, he was a member of the IUCN World Heritage Panel, which reviews World Heritage nominations and provides technical advice to IUCN.

Peter has more than 35 years’ experience working in conservation. He began his career as a park ranger with Australia’s New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service before joining IUCN’s Global Protected Areas Programme in 1999 where he was Executive Director for the 2003 IUCN World Parks Congress. From 2006 to 2010 he led IUCN’s work on protected areas across 23 countries as Head of its Protected Areas Programme in Asia. He then returned to his homeland Australia, working as a freelance consultant. Peter is also a former CEO and Director of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute and a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas.

World Heritage Conservation Officer, Partnerships

Mizuki Murai is World Heritage Conservation Officer at IUCN. She is the regional focal point for East and Southern Africa, North America and Asia, and a thematic lead on species conservation, freshwater, industrial commitments and impacts including extractives, infrastructures, hydropower, renewable energy and impact assessments.

Mizuki joined World Heritage Programme in January 2015 to support the monitoring of natural World Heritage and is now Conservation Officer leading on building partnerships for IUCN’s World Heritage conservation work. Her role involves carrying out ongoing research and monitoring on the state of conservation of natural and mixed World Heritage sites, with particular focus on East and Southern Africa, North America and Asia. She holds an MSc in Conservation and has previously worked for environmental organisations, such as WWF and Conservation International. Mizuki is a native English and Japanese speaker, and also speaks some Spanish, German and French. She is based in Cambridge, UK.

World Heritage Conservation Officer

Katherine (Kathy) Zischka is World Heritage Conservation Officer at IUCN. She leads on the coordination of IUCN's work on monitoring the state of conservation of natural and mixed World Heritage sites. She is the regional focal point for West and Central Africa, the Arab States and Western Europe, and a thematic lead on tourism, marine and pollution.

Kathy joined the IUCN World Heritage Programme in 2019. She is responsible for coordinating IUCN’s work on monitoring World Heritage sites facing threats as the Advisory Body on nature under the World Heritage Convention. This includes delivering annual State of Conservation reports to the World Heritage Committee, organising reactive monitoring missions, and managing IUCN’s relationship with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre.

Prior to joining the World Heritage Programme, Kathy was Director of the Australian Committee for IUCN and contributed to IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). She has a background in marine research and conservation, international environmental law, ecotourism, policy and management. A dual citizen of Australia and Germany, Kathy is fluent in English and German, and is strengthening her French.

World Heritage Monitoring Officer

Matthew Emslie Smith is World Heritage Monitoring Officer at IUCN and leads on the IUCN World Heritage Outlook. He is the regional focal point for Central Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania. He is a thematic lead on climate change and nature-based solutions, fire and benefits.

Matthew joined IUCN in May 2019 as part of the then-called World Heritage Programme, mainly to support in the preparation of the second update of the IUCN World Heritage Outlook, published in December 2020. He has also supported the team in World Heritage monitoring and evaluation processes, covering for maternity leave in 2022 and on a permanent basis. Prior to this, he worked in Central Asia on issues of governance and infrastructure development surrounding protected and conserved areas. Hailing from Dundee, Scotland, he holds a B.Sc in Zoology from the University of St Andrews, and an M.Sc in Conservation Science and Policy from the University of Exeter.

Evaluations and Operations Officer

Clemens Küpper is IUCN's Evaluations and Operations Officer for World Heritage. He leads on IUCN's evaluations of World Heritage nominations, upstream support to States Parties, and coordination of the IUCN World Heritage Panel. He is a thematic lead on governance, rights, culture and indigenous heritage, and conflict.

Clemens joined IUCN in 2020 as Evaluations and Operations Officer for the then-called World Heritage Programme. He is responsible for coordinating the technical evaluation of new candidate sites nominated to the World Heritage List, as part of IUCN’s role as advisory body on natural World Heritage. He coordinates IUCN’s “upstream” support, provided directly to States Parties before the preparation or submission of a nomination. He also provides operational and financial management support to the Programme. Before IUCN, Clemens worked at UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre in Paris, where he monitored the state of conservation of natural and mixed World Heritage sites in Europe and North America in close cooperation with IUCN. He studied geography in Bonn, London and Edinburgh and speaks German, English and French.

Programme Coordinator - World Heritage Leadership

Eugene Jo is the Programme Coordinator for the joint IUCN/ICCROM World Heritage Leadership Programme. She joined ICCROM in 2017 and is based in Rome. Her main tasks include coordinating various activities for the overall programme, such as integrating the Resource Manual on managing natural and cultural World Heritage and Disaster Risk Management, and enhancing the connection between sites and people by coordinating learning sites and leadership networks. Prior to her current position she has worked on various different areas of World Heritage at the national level. She was the World Heritage Focal Point for the Republic of Korea for nine years at the Cultural Heritage Administration, and has held staff and consultancy positions to various Korean entities. She also served as Rapporteur of the World Heritage Committee in 2016.

Eugene holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies, a BA in Korean History and is currently completing her PhD in World Heritage Studies at Konkuk University in Seoul.

Communications Officer for World Heritage

Célia is a communications professional with over 15 years of experience. She has led on communications for IUCN's work on World Heritage since 2013. She has overseen the launch of several publications, notably the IUCN World Heritage Outlook, ensuring dissemination and usefulness among the conservation community and beyond. Her role involves strategic communications, editorial and website management, media handling, and social media. She previous held the position of Communications Officer for the 2012 World Conservation Congress, IUCN’s four-yearly landmark event.

A Swiss-French national, Célia is fluent in French and English, and speaks some Italian. She spent 12 years in Dublin, Ireland, where she studied and worked as an editor in the press sector. She holds a Bachelor's degree in European Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and postgraduate diplomas in business studies and in journalism. She also undertook further learning in Heritage Conservation and Museology at the University of Geneva. 

World Heritage Science Adviser

Bastian Bertzky is a World Heritage Science Adviser for IUCN. He worked in the World Heritage team at IUCN Headquarters from 2005 to 2009, initially carrying out the monitoring of existing World Heritage sites, then coordinating the evaluation of new nominations. From 2009 to 2013, he developed and managed projects on protected areas and World Heritage sites at the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). This work included comparative analyses of all new biodiversity nominations and global gap analyses of terrestrial and marine biodiversity on the World Heritage List. Bastian holds a degree in Geography and an M.Sc. in Conservation Biology from the University of Cape Town. He has contributed to a number of scientific and technical publications on protected areas and World Heritage sites. Since 2013 he has been a research fellow at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra (Italy) supporting the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management (BIOPAMA) programme in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.