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

The Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers conference will be held in Birmingham, UK, from August 27-29, 2025 on the theme of Creative Geographies/Geographies of Creativity. 

For those working on social and cultural geography with an interest in aging, intergenerational learning, and place, please consider submitting a proposal to this online session – accepted papers will be notified by February 28, and the session will be submitted to the RGS-IBG team for consideration by March 7.

Aging and the ‘crafts of place’: creative engagements in practice and method 

In a 1981 lecture, Clifford Geertz used the term “crafts of place” to describe practices and systems that “work by the light of local knowledge” (1981, 167). This evocative terminology highlights the relationship between knowing, doing, and place – a nexus for interdisciplinary consideration of land-based knowledge, place-making, and place-based cultural production. Indigenous ways of knowing have long emphasized the role of land as pedagogy (Betasamosake Simpson 2014), while attention to sustainability has given new impetus to studies of place-based and vernacular skills, products, and practices (Paneels 2023; Watson 2019). Placemaking, too, might be conceptualized as a ‘craft of place,’ with recent scholarship beginning to outline the role of creativity in placemaking (Courage and McKeown 2019; Courage 2020) and underscoring the relationship between regional ecologies, cultural landscapes and cultural heritage practices (Gillett 2022; Luckman and Thomas 2024). Given that these frameworks highlight the importance of spending time with a place and the validity of embodied and relational ways of learning and knowing, how do they intersect with the real or imagined effects of time on human bodies and communities – with aging? How does engagement with the ‘crafts of place’ evolve throughout the life course? What is the role of intergenerational relationships in sustaining local knowledge and place-based practices? Might the elements of time and aging challenge or broaden the notions of local knowledge or crafts of place? Might thinking of aging in relation to these themes provide a lens through which to consider it as a socially, culturally and spatially-delineated process? How might research itself become a ‘craft of place’ that engages creatively with practices, places and (aging) demographics whose ways of knowing have been historically marginalized by institutions?

This single-session online panel invites speakers to submit abstracts for 10-15 minute presentations that engage with themes of aging and ‘the crafts of place,’ broadly interpreted, with particular consideration given to those that use case studies to highlight creative and innovative practices and methods. Speakers are invited to share ideas for how best to facilitate conversation around their presentation topics and will be able to upload additional material as well as questions for the audience ahead of the session. It is anticipated that the session will include an opportunity for discussion in themed breakout rooms. 

Research Group Sponsorship: Social and Cultural Geography Research Group Sponsorship application submitted, not yet confirmed

Convenor and Affiliation: Dr. Molly-Claire Gillett, Postdoctoral Fellow, Trent Centre for Aging and Society, Trent University (Canada) & School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, University of Galway (Ireland)

Guidelines for prospective authors: please upload an abstract of ~250 words along with a short bio of ~50 words to this form: https://forms.office.com/r/iiNZwUcdaW by February 21, 2025.

Questions can be directed to Molly-Claire Gillett (mollyclairegillett@trentu.ca) Selected authors will be notified by February 28, with the complete panel proposal sent to RGS for consideration by March 7.

References:

Betasamosake Simpson, Leanne. 2014. “Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious     transformation.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3 no. 3: 1-25.            https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/22170/17985 

Courage, Cara. 2020. The art of placemaking: a typology of art practices in placemaking. London:     Routledge.

Courage, Cara and Anita McKeown. 2019. Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory, and Practice. London:  Routledge.

Cutchin, Malcolm and Graham D. Rowles, eds. 2024. Handbook on Aging and Place. Cheltenham and   Northampton: Edgar. 

Geertz, Clifford. 2000. Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive Anthropology. E-book. New York:   Basic Books.

Gillett, Molly-Claire. 2022. “‘Storying’ Landscape and Material Practice: Clones Crochet Lacemaking            as Irish Intangible Cultural Heritage.” New Hibernia Review 26, no. 4: 36-   64. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2022.0045.

Luckman, Susan and Nicola Thomas. 2024. Craft Communities. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

Panneels, Inge. 2023. “The Quintuple Bottom Line: A Framework for Place-Based Sustainable          Enterprise in the Craft Industry.” Sustainability 15, no. 4: 3791.     https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043791

Skinner, Mark, Rachel Winterton and Keiran Walsh eds. 2021. Rural Gerontology: Towards Critical       Perspectives on Rural Ageing. London and New York: Routledge.

Watson, Julia. 2019. Lo—TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism. London: Taschen.

Contact Information

Molly-Claire Gillett
Postdoctoral Fellow, Trent University and University of Galway

Contact Email

mollyclairegillett@trentu.ca

The Archives Association of Ontario is pleased to announce the 2025 Annual Conference to be held from May 6th to May 8th virtually.

Theme: Ebb and Flow: Narratives of Adaptability

This theme focuses on how archives, archivists, and information professionals adapt to challenges, recover from disruptions, and transform their practices to remain vital and responsive to their communities. Whether facing environmental change, evolving technologies, or funding constraints, “Ebb and Flow” explores how the path towards innovation and growth is rarely straightforward.

Stay tuned for more information!  #aao25conf

• Call for Papers (PDF) 
• Call for Student Posters and Papers (PDF) 
  
  *DEADLINE FOR CALLS EXTENDED TO FEBRUARY 14, 2025*

Sounds of a Lifetime: Exploring Life Writing in Audio Media (29–30 January 2026, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) 

This conference aims to expand the boundaries of life writing studies by focusing on the often-overlooked domain of audio life narratives. As Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson highlight in the preface of Reading Autobiography, “[l]ife narrative studies has become an expansive, transnational, multimedia field” (xi), going far beyond the written word. In the latest edition of this seminal work, they touch upon the concept of mediated voice and the aural qualities of social media messages, indicating the varied manifestations of auto/biographical acts (129).  

Building on the exciting new work being done in studies of life writing, auto/biography, literary studies, sound studies, and media studies, this conference seeks to explore the multifaceted realm of sonic life narratives, with a particular emphasis on their literary and artistic features, as well as listeners’ individual and collective experiences. More specifically, it seeks to examine how audio life writing represents, mediates, and (re)constitutes lives; what aesthetic strategies are used and what effects they generate; how audio life narratives are received and remediated; as well as their inherent politics. 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:  

• Theoretical/methodological reflections on audio life writing  
• Audio life writing in specific genres and media (radio drama, podcasts, rap and spoken word poetry, …) 
• Voice, sound and music in audio life writing  
• Audio life writing and cultural memory 
• Audio life writing and identity (individual and collective) 
• Audio life writing and politics 
• Audio life writing and intermediality 
• Adaptations of life stories to audio media 
• Audio archives and life narratives  
• Fact and fiction in audio life writing  
• Listening to audio life writing  
• … 

The conference will be held in English, but research on non-Anglophone contexts is strongly encouraged. Please note that we are aiming for an in-person conference.  

The following keynote speakers have confirmed: Julia Lajta-Novak (University of Vienna), Jarmila Mildorf (University of Paderborn), Matthew Rubery (Queen Mary University of London) 

Please submit your abstract (250–300 words) as a PDF or Word document, including your name, affiliation, and contact details, along with a brief biography (100 words) via email to soundsofalifetime@vub.be by February 15, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by March 20, 2025. Selected papers will be considered for publication in a special issue of an international peer- reviewed journal or an edited volume.  

Please follow updates on our conference website: https://events.vub.be/sounds-of-a-lifetime-exploring-life-writing-in-audio-media 

The one-day conference will be held on 12 June 2025, at University of Vienna. The conference will be organised jointly by the Vienna Center for the History of Collecting (Austria) and Moravian Library in Brno (Czech Republic) and will be accompanied by a poster exhibition on Bernard Paul Moll composite atlas preserved at Moravian Library which originated in Vienna in the 18th century.

We welcome papers on history of map collecting and composite atlases, 17th-20th centuries. Paper´s title, abstract of 5-8 senteces and short CV in English are welcome by 17 March 2025. The acceptance notification is scheduled on 31 March 2025. There will be 20 minutes space for presentations. The conference language will be English.

Contact Information

Eva Chodejovska, Moravian Library in Brno (Czech Republic)

Silvia Tammaro, University of Vienna (Austria)

Contact Email

chodejovska@mzk.cz

EurAsian Materials in Central European Collections (Innsbruck, 5 and 6 June 2025). 

Traditional categories essential to cataloguing and describing objects (such as date, maker, and geographic origin) are opposed to the layered processes of creation, circulation, and reinterpretation that characterize much EurAsian material culture in central European collections. Museum labels pinpoint where and when objects were “made.” A methodology grounded in material histories shifts the emphasis to multiple sites of creation and adaptive reuse. These questions open new spatial and temporal contexts for objects, placing them more firmly in local and global circuits. The goal of this workshop is to bring these material entanglements to the surface and develop concrete measures that make them more visible to both scholars and the general public. To do so, the workshop brings together a group of international experts to present cutting edge research and explore new avenues for scholarship, teaching, and outreach that place Eurasian materials at the center of thinking about central European collections. 

The focus will be on the use and adaptation of raw materials (such as metals, minerals, bones, nutshells) to explore deep object biographies. The workshop will look closely at well-known EurAsian resources like lapis lazuli (Lake Baika and in the Kokcha River valley), ruby (Central and Southeast Asia), nephrite (most famously from Hotan), diamonds (Indian subcontinent), citrine (Ural Mountains), and coconut (Indo-Pacific). Workshop participants will also focus on less-studied materials such as chalcedony, aurochs’ horn, jasper, agate, rock crystal, amethyst, sardonyx, diamonds, heliotrope, and garnet. 

The workshop will include academic papers as well as a tour of the collections at Schloss Ambras, and a brainstorming session on outreach (focused on floating ideas for revising labels, creating digital tours for existing platforms, educational programming, ideas for the development of educational materials to be sold at gift shops). The workshop is organized and funded by the FWF Cluster of Excellence in EurAsian Transformations, and we have funding to cover the cost of travel and accommodations for a limited group of participants.

We invite proposals for traditional research papers (20 minutes) or object-focused discussions (10-15 minutes). Please send a title and abstract of no more than 300 words alongside a CV to radwayr@ceu.edu by February 15, 2025.

Contact Email

radwayr@ceu.edu

The Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture is pleased to share the Call for Papers for the 11th Annual Conference ‘A Polyphony of Emotions: Thinking Affect in Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.’ This conference occurs at the University of Amsterdam on 2, 3 and 4 July 2025. 

Cultural heritage shapes individual and collective emotions, and vice versa. The reciprocal relationship between heritage and emotions is demonstrated by how, in recent years, political, activist and academic debates have reconsidered the importance of affect. No longer relegated merely to the individual and psychological dimension, these debates have come to frame emotions as constituent elements of social experience. Suffice it to consider the use of social fear of a global nuclear war; the imperialist nostalgia of Western countries, which see nationalism and/or populism as the solution to counter globalisation; the emotional polarization with the ongoing wars in Palestine and Ukraine; the resurgence of radical ethno-traditionalist rhetoric all around the world, driven by frustration with open-market globalism, and the manipulation of foreign-state propaganda aimed at exploiting emotions to politically target local populations; the pride or vindictive anger of activists who deface museums, works of art and monuments; heightened emotions in the context of social revolutions and political revolts and (neo)colonial struggle, the emotions connected to the memory and impact of the Pan-Atlantic slave trade and all forms of enslavement of people; or the solastalgia and anxiety caused by the ever-faster crisis of climate change.

These few examples indicate the extent to which emotions and thinking affect can become performative forces, driving actions and therefore building, preserving, destroying heritage and memory. Understanding the role of emotions in heritage sites, memory acts and material culture practices, policies and politics, therefore, is essential to grasp how the past is experienced, contested, romanticized, rejected or silenced across various local, national and transnational levels. In response to the need to better understand these processes, the 11th annual conference of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) will be dedicated to the polyphonies of emotions and thinking affect in heritage, memory and material culture studies. By crossing academic, artistic and professional boundaries, the aim of the conference is to investigate how the past can be constituted as a battleground where emotions are designed, weaponized and manipulated to advance political and ideological agendas, or to shape the mobilization of communities. This conference aims to explore the dynamic relationship between heritage and collective emotions, focusing on how emotions affect varied global heritage and memory practices, narratives and policies, and, vice versa, how heritage can serve as a tool for emotional mobilization, resilience and reconciliation.

We welcome abstracts and proposals for papers, panels and roundtables emanating from diverse historical and geographical contexts that engage with (but are not restricted to) the following themes:

• Theories of emotions and heritage: what theoretical perspectives can illuminate the relationship between heritage, emotion, and conflict, and how can these frameworks deepen our understanding of the emotional dimensions of heritage?
• Emotions and the politics of heritage and social justice: how do emotions contribute to preserving or challenging dominant and hegemonic heritage narratives? What role do emotions play in (re)shaping research positionalities, resisting cultural and political polarisation or facing systemic oppression and injustice?
• Emotions and heritage construction: how are emotional narratives intentionally constructed in heritage sites, museums, works of literature, films, and commemorations, with the aim of influencing collective memory and identity?
• Emotion and collective memory: how do emotional frameworks shape collective memory and the understanding of the past?
• The weaponization of emotions in conflict: how are emotions strategically manipulated to justify the destruction of cultural heritage or to mobilize communities to defend it?
• Heritage and collective solidarity: in times of crisis, how do communities utilize heritage to foster emotional resilience, solidarity, and a sense of shared purpose?
• Methodologies for studying emotions and heritage: what innovative qualitative and quantitative research methods are most effective for analyzing the role of emotion in heritage studies?

Applications

• A short abstract (max. 250 words)
• A brief academic biography (including name, affiliation, research interests; max 100 words)

Applications for panels and roundtables

• A short rationale of the aim of the panel (max. 250 words)
• A short abstract of each paper to be presented (max. 250 words)
• A brief academic biography of all presenters (including name, affiliation, research interests; max 100 words)

Proposals can be submitted by 15 March 2025 to ahmannualconference@gmail.com.

About the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM)

The AHM fosters dynamic, interdisciplinary and transnational research on heritage and memory, organizes PhD training, seminars, reading groups, workshops, public debates and international conferences, and stimulates schola. The school brings together researchers working in diverse areas and fields, interconnecting heritage and memory studies, cultural studies, museum studies, archaeology, material culture, art history, media, conservation and restoration, archival studies, digital humanities, postcolonial and performative studies, religious studies, music and theatre studies, conflict and identity studies, Slavonic languages and cultures, Holocaust and genocide studies, European memory studies, Middle Eastern studies, and cultural, public and oral history. For more information about AHM please visit the website: https://ahm.uva.nl/ 

Contact Information

Josien Franken, Conference Assistant. 

Contact Email

ahmannualconference@gmail.com

URL

https://ahm.uva.nl/shared/subsites/amsterdam-institute-for-humanities-research/…