Tuuli Lähdesmäki is Associate Professor at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Viktorija L. A. ¿eginskas is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of History and Ethnology of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Introduction: reflecting on heritage diplomacy 1. EU heritage diplomacy: entangled external and internal cultural relations 2. Mainstreaming heritages: abstract heritage values as strategic resources in EU external relations 3. Dialogic approach in the EU's international cultural relations: joint EUNIC-EU delegation projects as heritage diplomacy 4. Debating structural violence in European heritage diplomacy 5. Heritage diplomacy through the lens of the European Capitals of Culture programme 6. 'Contact zones' of heritage diplomacy: transformations of museums in the (post)pandemic reality 7. 'Constructing' heritage diplomacy in Central Asia: China's Sinocentric historicisation of transnational World Heritage Sites 8. Inviting all humanity to an elite club? Understanding tensions in UNESCO's global heritage regimes through the lens of a typology of goods Heritage diplomacy; an afterword