Heritage plays a crucial role in addressing historical injustices. Artworks, as cultural artifacts, operate within the broader framework of accountability, memory, and reconciliation. This presentation explores two ways in which heritage functions as a means of “paying debts”. First, heritage serves as restitution, that is an attempt to return what was taken. The restitution of looted or stolen artworks is a tangible act of reparation, restoring cultural heritage to rightful communities while challenging historical narratives shaped by dispossession. The return of Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, confiscated by the Nazis, exemplifies how repatriation is not merely a legal transaction but a recognition of past wrongs. Similar cases, such as the return of Indigenous sacred objects, highlight the role of heritage in redressing historical violence. Second, heritage serves as acknowledgment, recognizing historical debts that cannot be repaid. In these cases, restitution is not just about returning objects but confronting the irreparable nature of certain injustices. The case of the Benin Bronzes demonstrates how returning cultural heritage extends beyond ownership disputes, embodying recognition of colonial violence and the impossibility of full reparation. Nevertheless, these two dimensions – restitution and acknowledgment – often overlap. By examining these dynamics, this presentation explores how heritage is mobilized to “pay debts,” forcing societies to confront their past, reshape collective memory, and rethink the ethics of cultural heritage.

An examination of the main European and Italian legislation shows that the common ideas of sustainable development, traditionally linked to the protection of the environment, are increasingly correlated with the cultural sphere, giving rise to the concept of cultural sustainability. The latter is an element of integration and intergenerational connection between people, historical landscapes and cultural heritage. A point of concern in the direction of building sustainable heritage relationships is an environment increasingly mediated by digital technologies. These intervene at three different levels in providing access to, managing and educating about heritage. Digitalisation has revolutionised the way in which heritage, both tangible and intangible, is conceived and preserved, making physical resources that are limited and difficult to access easily discoverable and allowing local traditions to be shared and recognised by a growing global audience. The link between sustainable development and digital technologies enhances heritage for inclusiveness and intercultural creativity. This is increasingly part of national and international policies, such as in the Italian PNRR and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is therefore crucial to emphasise that digital access and inclusion are key to an effective democratisation of culture and knowledge, and that sustainable relationships with heritage can foster democratic participation, social responsibility and environmental awareness for the development of communities and territories.

The ‘’Brain Program’’ (1984-1989) of the Popular Republic of Bulgaria (1944-1989) is the largest innovation in the field of bio-psycho-social sciences in the modern history of Bulgaria. Its creators’ ambition was that Program will be innovative in, at least, four dimensions: 1. To modernize the management of human resources (from educational to the industrial institutions), using bio-psycho-social evidence and technologies, 2. to reduce and overcome the technological lag behind of the then ‘West’ in the bio-psycho-social area, 3. to engage the then bio-psycho-social sciences with the fast growing high-tech sectors of production (computer technology, military industry, etc.); 4. to introduce and establish project-oriented inter-institutional entrepreneurial scientific culture. The critical heritage studies approach promises to engage contemporary bio-psycho-social scientists in Bulgaria in reflexive work on the assessment of the Brain Program as an intellectual heritage. The work on the project conducted so far reveals specific disconnections between the contemporary and then- bio-psycho-social scientists, institutes and processes (narrative gaps, archival poverty; biographical holes, etc.). A hypothesis will be proposed for the possible reason for this peculiar “alienation from heritage”.