There are currently 1031 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List embracing cultural, natural and mixed categories. While it has long been recognised that sites require protection, conservation and management, they are increasingly implicated in wider programmes of social and economic development. A significant part of this is tourism-related which is widely perceived as a pathway to development particularly within developing countries where heritage and the wider landscape are important, if often fragile resources. Closely linked to this is the wider cultural and creative sector that animates places and supports tourism. The United Nation's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognises the role that the inter-connected sectors of culture, heritage, the creative industries and tourism can play in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. The focus of this Network is specifically on the role that World Heritage sites can play in sustainable development as high profile actors in both cultural heritage and international tourism. In terms of the sites themselves and associated symbolic, 'brand' value of UNESCO inscription, World Heritage sites offer significant development opportunities for ODA countries. However, there are clearly sensitivities around a more instrumental use of World Heritage that has long been immersed in the discourse of protection and preservation rather than as a lever for social, environmental and economic improvement within the context of sustainable development. Furthermore, there remains limited understanding of the ways in which World Heritage can actualise sustainable development through engagement with local communities and the embedded knowledge and creativity they hold. This role of the community is recognised by UNESCO but mechanisms for harnessing this are not well developed. While clearly recognising the over-arching need to protect and maintain World Heritage, there is a need to re-imagine and re-structure the way that it is used; not simply as interesting and attractive places to visit but as highly visible and influential resources that can be used to achieve the SDGs. Through a series of workshops, including those held in ODA countries, this project establishes and builds a Network of experienced and new researchers, policy makers and local stakeholders to share research, new ideas and examples of good practice relating to the ways in which World Heritage can be effectively and sensitively mobilised for sustainable development. Each workshop will focus on a World Heritage site and will act as a research activity and an opportunity to debate questions of practice and policy around concepts such as developing and managing sustainable tourism, working with the wider cultural and creative sectors and site management and governance. It will seek to better understand the conditions of working with World Heritage and the barriers to sustainable utilisation of the sites. The Network will recognise the multi/interdisciplinary nature of its objectives and its core partners and will seek to learn from the communities and stakeholders it engages with. In working with UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and specifically the sustainable tourism programme the Network will endeavour to shape policy and strategy and to disseminate its outputs and working methods beyond its immediate partners so as to engage with the other World Heritage sites in ODA countries.