United Kingdom

Call for Papers: Materiality and Precarity: Preserving Holocaust Memorial Sites 

We are delighted to announce a upcoming postgraduate conference at the University of Cambridge, in partnership with DAAD Cambridge, for graduate and early career researchers to share emerging research on challenges to preserving Holocaust sites. 

The conference will take place in Cambridge on June 25-26, 2025; paper proposals are due on March 31, 2025.

We welcome proposals on topics included – but not limited to – the following:

• Evolving interpretations of ‘Authenticity’
• Climate Change and Memorial Sites; impact, planning, prevention
• Memorialisation
• Holocaust tourism
• Sources of “wear and tear” to physical objects, buildings, and landscapes at Holocaust sites
• Representing place in cultural and popular media
• The role of ‘virtual space’ and digital media
• Political controversies about management of memorial sites
• Contemporary comparisons between climate change and Nazi genocide 
• Contemporary and historical conflicts over space at sites (national, religious)

Applicants are invited to submit a paper title, short bio (150 words) and abstract (300 words) to Beatrice Leeming (University of Cambridge) rl699@cam.ac.uk and Jonathan Marrow (University of Cambridge) jm2521@cam.ac.uk
Applications close on 31 March, 2025. There will be funding to support travel costs and accommodation.

Contact Information

 Jonathan Marrow (University of Cambridge) jm2521@cam.ac.uk and Beatrice Leeming (University of Cambridge) rl699@cam.ac.uk 

Contact Email

jm2521@cam.ac.uk

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

jane.hamlett@rhul.ac.uk

URL

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-education/research/research-enviro…

United Kingdom

Stitched Together: Needlework Making and Research
21st-22nd August 2025
Royal School of Needlework, Hampton Court Palace

CALL FOR PAPERS

Keynote speakers: Dr Lynn Hulse, Raisa Kabir, Rose Sinclair MBE, Hannah Sutherland ACR

The Royal School of Needlework and Pasold Research Fund invite papers for the Royal School of Needlework’s first conference on historical needlework, ‘Stitched Together: Needlework Making and Research’. This conference will imagine needlework in its broadest sense, classified as all art and craft involving a needle, hook, or shuttle. This includes embroidery, plain sewing, lace making, knitting, crocheting, and weaving.

Needlework is universal, made around the world in countless ways for nearly all of human history. Through needles, hooks, and shuttles, we see economic, social, political, religious, and cultural changes. Needlework demonstrates who had access to what materials, how designs and stitches travelled the world via the Silk Road and across oceans, how the rise and fall of empires affected design and resources, how technology influenced changing aesthetics and craft practices, and how people have spent their time in business and leisure. 

Though needlework has long been the subject of academic, socioeconomic, and object-centric study, there have been very few opportunities for those who create needlework and those who research needlework to collaborate and learn from one another. It is the hope that this conference will bridge the gap between visual and historiographical analysis and knowledge of the historical, socioeconomic, and literary contexts of needlework with embodied knowledge of materials, techniques, and artistic choices. 

This conference is a meeting place for anyone working on topics related to historical embroidery to present their work and research. This includes work happening in academia, museums and heritage institutions, art studios, classrooms, and independent research environments. We encourage proposals from established and emerging scholars, makers, curators, conservators, and anyone whose work is relevant to discussions about historical needlework in any capacity.  

We invite proposals for 15-minute presentations. These can take any format, such as academic papers, conversations between makers and researchers, or demonstrations. We are especially interested in presentations that explore the potential of collaboration between those who use historical needlework in different ways. Topics may include but are not limited to: 

• New discoveries in the field of historical needlework 
• The relationship between making and research
• Conservation of historical needlework
• Curating historical needlework
• Marginalised needleworkers (race, gender, class, region, technique) 
• Historic needlework networks, especially global ones 
• Studying historical needlework through making 
• Potential for collaboration between various stakeholders in the world of historical embroidery

Proposal deadline: Monday, 14th April 2025

Please send a paper title, abstract (maximum 250 words), and bio (maximum 50 words) to collection@royal-needlework.org.uk. Decisions will be made by mid-May.

The conference will allow for virtual attendance via Zoom webinar but only in-person presentations will be considered.

Contact Email

collection@royal-needlework.org.uk

URL: https://royal-needlework.org.uk/stitched-together-conference-call-for-papers/

Conference: Out of Scale: From “Miniature” Material Cultures to the Anthropic Principle
London, June 16-18, 2025
 

Conveners: Wenjie Su (Princeton University; CASVA), Yizhou Wang (Hong Kong Baptist University), Stephen Whiteman (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Dates and Venue: June 16-17, 2025 (conference at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
                                June 18, 2025 (optional viewing sessions in or around London)

Keynote speakers: Andrew James Hamilton (The Art Institute of Chicago), Wei-Cheng Lin (The University of Chicago)

Call for Paper: 
Scale—the relative dimension, magnitude, or scope of objects, and their proportional relationship to the observer—is often understood through the lens of individual or collective visual assumptions. As inhabitants of the terrestrial sphere, we tend to rely on our bodies and cultural paradigms to interpret the scale of geographical terrain, human-made structures, material artifacts, social phenomena, and historical events. Technological advancements—from maritime expeditions to space exploration, from telescopic and microscopic investigations to the detection of cosmic microwave background—have urged humanity to redefine its scale of existence. Meanwhile, various philosophical and religious traditions have long pondered humanity’s place and purpose in relation to natural and supernatural realms.

By exploring designs and creations conceived on a micro-scale or as small-sized, this conference invites discussion on human creativity and human existence through the theme of scale. Examples abound across diverse human traditions, including burial and ritual objects, microarchitecture, portrait miniatures, and accessorial items such as netsukes, snuff boxes, and pocket watches. These objects appear diminutive when compared to the human body, the “worlds” they represent, or their counterparts within more dominant socio-cultural systems. At times dismissed as frivolous and superficial, these streamlined and recontextualized objects can evoke out-of-scale resonances, transcending the original limitations of data or resources.

This conference connects studies that examine the art historical, historiographical, and ideological significance of scaled objects. First, we aim to deepen discussions on the sensorial, spiritual, intellectual, and technical implications of scaling. Particularly understudied are ephemeral objects and repositioned sites, such as lab settings and festival stagings. Second, we seek to investigate how the scale—of originals, reproductions, or paradigms—has shaped the central or peripheral status of specific objects and sites in art historical scholarship.

Third, we aim to highlight the unique contributions that humanities and art historical scholars can make in addressing cutting-edge intellectual challenges in fields including AI and space exploration. Throughout the global history of visual and material cultures, creatively re-scaled objects have played a central role in conceiving and simulating worlds that surpass our optical and epistemological thresholds. By exploring how humans have continually shifted scales to position themselves within and across realms, this conference reflects on humanity’s inherently limited yet endlessly creative perspective and envisions pathways to launch beyond boundaries.  

Further questions and topics include but are not limited to: 
– Material, aesthetic, sensory and affective qualities unique to small-scale objects.
– Practices of modeling and scaling in the production of scientific knowledge, such as mapping and laboratory experiments.
– The dialectics of miniature and monumentality.
– Relationships between scale, virtuality, and reality.
– Critical reflections on the interpretational framework of “miniaturization”, such as the so-called miniature paintings of various Asian and Islamic traditions.
– Challenges posed by small-scale objects or fragments in archaeological, museum, and pedagogical contexts.
– The role of scale-shifting in methodological turns, such as global history, gender criticism, and eco-criticism.

We invite proposals from scholars in a range of disciplines, including art and architecture history, museum studies, cultural history, intellectual history, and the history of science, and on any geographic region and any period of time.

Please send an abstract (ca. 250 words) for a 20-min presentation and a 150-word bio as a single PDF file by March 15, 2025 to conference convenors: w-su@nga.gov ; yizhouwang@hkbu.edu.hk ; stephen.whiteman@courtauld.ac.uk 

Acceptance notification: March 30, 2025

Event details:
The symposium will be held June 16-17, 2025 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Optional group viewing sessions will be arranged on June 18. Accepted speakers will be invited to propose objects from London-based collections or sites that resonate with the themes of scale and the miniature.

Contact Email

yizhouwang@hkbu.edu.hk