Call for Papers: AHRA Phd Symposium: Research Encounters via Architecture’s Methods. Newcastle, 22-23 April 2020
16th Annual AHRA PhD Student Symposium 2020, Newcastle University
The Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) 16th AHRA PhD Student Symposium 2020, to be hosted by the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, takes as its departure point the tendency for architectural research to be dissected into distinct disciplinary categories, including ‘architectural history’, ‘architectural theory’ and ‘architectural design’. This categorisation implies that architectural research requires methods to be applied from outside of its discipline, rather than conceiving of architectural research as a discipline with its own research methods. How then might we consider our encounters with architectural research in a way that links to our own ways of working and conception of the wider world?
Encountering architectural research in this way means acknowledging that architecture is not only inherently interdisciplinary, but that it is also a field offering its own distinct practices and ways of relating to society and culture. It is such re-thinking that, as this symposium proposes, opens the possibility for architectural research to be situated as a core research discipline. This re-consideration of architectural research is part of an ongoing project conceived by the Architectural Research Collaborative (ARC) at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University.
Some suggested themes that may relate to research encounters via architecture’s methods:
- Encounters between the interrelated scales of architectural research: from macro to micro; from infrastructures, assemblages, ecologies, buildings to construction details.
- Encounters within iterative approaches to architectural research that may consider: conversations, specifications, experimentations, prototypes and risk-taking.
- Encounters between architecture and its relations to social, economic, geographic, cultural, historical, conceptual and material forces and practices.
- Encounters of projective thinking, that may include: creative practice research methods, processes of translation between drawings and buildings, the imagining of better worlds and speculative futures.
Submissions of proposals (one proposal per applicant) are invited from registered PhD candidates in Architecture and its related disciplines. The call is open to students from institutions world-wide and registration for the symposium is free of charge. All submissions will be double blind peer-reviewed by the organising committee, members of the AHRA Steering Group and Newcastle University scholars.
Please submit an anonymised PDF document containing your title and 350 word abstract defining the subject and summarising the argument of the proposed 15 minute paper, within an email including a short 50 word biographical description outlining your research field, as well as the name of your institution and supervisor(s). Successful applicants are expected to share the final draft of their full paper with the convenors, the deadline date for which will be announced one month in advance of the conference. Papers will be arranged in themed parallel sessions, with discussion of the presented papers at the close of each session.
Call for Methods Workshops. Please submit an anonymised PDF document containing your title, timeframe, and a 350 word proposal for a workshop that focusses on a particular research practice within an email including a short 50 word biographical description outlining your research field, as well as the name of your institution and supervisor(s). The workshops will all take place on Wednesday 22nd April 2020.
The deadline for receipt of all proposals is Friday 20 December 2019.
Please email paper abstracts/workshop proposals to: ahra.phd@newcastle.ac.uk.
Successful candidates will be notified by Friday 24th January 2020.
For more information, please see https://www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/events/ahra/
