Talking Records is an annual themed symposium hosted by The National Archives, bringing together researchers and practitioners working with archival collections.

Talking Records 2026: Spaces and places of care

Call for papers

Call for papers deadline: Friday 18 September 2026

Symposium date: Monday 7 December 2026

The 2026 symposium will explore histories of care and welfare and their intersections with histories of spaces and places. These histories leave complex traces in archival collections, entangled with histories of medicine, public health, poverty, government, social security and more.

Histories of welfare and care can be found across the collections at The National Archives. These range from records relating to welfare legislation to detailed documentation of particular institutions. These include the evolving responsibilities of the state for health and social care, the establishment of the National Health Service, and of documentation of institutions from medieval hospitals to Poor Law Unions.

The historic records of government offer rich insights into the diverse places and spaces associated with care and welfare. Plans, drawings, photographs, correspondence and many other documents testify to the ways in which space and place have shaped the provision of care and welfare in Britain and beyond. They also show how places and spaces have, in turn, been shaped by changing care and welfare practices, theories, and experiences.

We invite researchers and practitioners working with archival collections to present 15-minute papers exploring the spatial dimensions of care and welfare in any time period or global context. We particularly encourage contributions from early career researchers, and welcome alternative presentation formats, including creative responses.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• institutions of care and welfare: hospitals, sanitoriums, hospices, almshouses, orphanages, clinics, creches, asylums, shelters, refuges, charities
• architecture and built environments: rooms, wards, facilities, buildings; planning, design, and use
• homes and households: family and domestic caregiving
• medical and therapeutic understandings of place and space: hygiene, climate, infection control, rest and recovery, convalescence
• outdoor spaces of care: ‘open air’ nurseries, hospital gardens, green spaces
• liminal, improvised, repurposed, or temporary places of care, such as field hospitals and ships
• embodied, subjective, and affective experiences of space and place: senses, emotions, memory
• community spaces of care, marginalised histories
• alternative places and spaces of care, such as ‘green’ and ‘blue’ social prescribing
• archives as places of care: for records, documents, artefacts, people, histories, readers, staff

Please note that Talking Records is an in-person only event, and therefore contributors are expected to present at The National Archives, Kew.

The event is free to attend and we have a limited number of bursaries of £150, which can be used towards travel and/or accommodation.