Culture Sector Fellow

Paris, France

In 2009, Kiley Arroyo was awarded a fellowship within UNESCO’s Culture Sector in Paris, where she conducted research on comparative cultural policy and the international legal instruments designed to safeguard cultural heritage and creative expression.

Her work examined the regulatory frameworks and multilateral agreements used by member states to protect and promote arts, culture, and creativity — with particular emphasis on the ratification and implementation of the 2001 Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage.

Beyond technical policy analysis, the fellowship illuminated a deeper truth: cultural heritage protection is inseparable from the preservation of diverse cultural logics — the distinct ways communities understand identity, memory, stewardship, and collective life.

International conventions such as those advanced by UNESCO are not merely administrative tools; they are structural mechanisms that affirm cultural sovereignty and protect plural ways of knowing and being in a rapidly homogenizing global economy.

This experience laid important groundwork for CSC’s ecosystem stewardship approach — reinforcing the understanding that lasting transformation requires safeguarding cultural diversity alongside institutional and economic reform.

The fellowship deepened CSC’s commitment to designing strategies that honor cultural autonomy while strengthening the structural conditions that allow diverse traditions to endure and evolve.