Histories of Disabilities and Living Spaces from Ancient to Modern Worlds
Royal Holloway’s Bodies and Material Culture Research Group invites papers for a one-day workshop in Central London on histories of disabilities and living spaces from the ancient to the modern world. The relationship between historical actors with physical and mental disabilities and the places they live is complex, with embodied experiences and the material world offering scope for both agency and frustration. Drawing on the recent expansion in histories of disabilities across ancient, medieval, early modern and modern studies, this workshop applies this new critical approach to the study of past living spaces. The workshop will focus on how people with physical impairments, mental illness, chronic illness, degenerative, and age-related conditions (including any intersection of the above) interacted with historic domestic environments. The workshop will use comparative histories – from the ancient past to the contemporary present – to look at similarities and differences across time and space. We will explore new methodologies for interpreting embodied experiences, drawing on ideas of co-production and participatory research. We aim to further shared understandings of lived experiences, and to explore how these might be represented in public histories and heritage.
Keynote Speakers: Kyle Jordan (Independent Curator and Researcher) and India Whiteley (QMUL)
Papers might address, but are not limited to, the experience of people with disabilities, chronic or mental illness, degenerative, and/or age-related conditions (including any intersection of the above) in relation to the following themes:
- The planning, design, building and adaptation of living spaces
- Embodiment and the interaction of bodies with domestic material culture
- Development of historic assistive technologies and therapies
- Household structures and hierarchies e.g. Roman households and their extended family members, early modern apprentice households, nuclear families including: development of support networks; exploitation and/or abuse
- Changing patterns of individual, family and collective residence e.g. monasteries or schools
- Identification with domestic space and home as an emotional construct
- New approaches to interpreting historic embodied experiences e.g. participatory research or co-production
- Methods and source materials that reveal living spaces including archaeological, textual, legislative, visual and material
- Strategies for representing historical actors in domestic heritage
The workshop will take place on Tuesday June 24th 2025 at Senate House, University of London. Please send proposals (300 word abstract and 100 word biography) to Jane Hamlett jane.hamlett@rhul.ac.uk and Hannah Platts Hannah.platts@rhul.ac.uk by March 31st. We welcome proposals from those at all career stages of academia, independent scholars, heritage and museum professionals. Papers can be presented in person or online.
Contact Information
Jane Hamlett
Contact Email
URL
https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-education/research/research-enviro…
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