Conference: Objects, Families, Homes: British Material Cultures in Global Context (London)

Objects, Families, Homes: British Material Cultures in Global Context is a two-day conference, which will take place on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 July 2014.
Confirmed keynote speakers include Deborah Cohen, Professor of Modern British and European History at Northwestern University and author of Household Gods: The British and their Possessions (2006) and Family Secrets (2013), in dialogue with Marietta Crichton-Stuart, a descendant of the Marquess of Bute, who has researched how Margaret Bruce designed and furnished Falkland House in Fife in the 1830s and 1840s.
Registration is accessible (until 30 June 2014) via the UCL online store.
Members of the public are warmly welcomed to attend this event.
Location: Roberts Building, UCL, Gower Street

The conference will take place in the Roberts Building on the Bloomsbury Campus of  University College London. A map giving directions to the Roberts Building can be foundhere. The building stands opposite Waterstones, Gower Street. The Roberts Building is a 5-10 minute walk from various underground stations including, Goodge Street, Euston, Euston Square, Russell Square and Tottenham Court Road.
Programme: Download the Objects, Families, Homes Schedule.
Since 2011, The East India Company at Home project has focused on country houses—and the families and objects that inhabited them—to explore how British material culture developed in a global context during the eighteenth and nineteenth century.  The project’s goals have been twofold.  First, we have sought to illuminate the broad-ranging ways in which the activities of the English East India Company shaped elite material cultures in Britain—and by doing so, shaped British identities in the Georgian and Victorian periods, and beyond.  Second, we have sought to develop new ways of connecting diverse communities of historical researchers (archivists, curators, family historians, freelance historians, local historians, stately home volunteers and university-based historians) and in so doing to weave otherwise dispersed studies into a transnational material narrative.  At the same time, by disseminating research findings through our website we have made them available on an open-access basis. The conference plans to encourage a range of speakers to present on these themes and discuss their wider significance.
Any questions? Please email: eicathome@ucl.ac.uk