Each year the History of Architecture and Built Environment (HABE) research group in ESALA at the University of Edinburgh welcomes guest speakers and colleagues to present an evening seminar on their research. The events are a fantastic opportunity to hear about the latest research in the field from researchers working in the UK, Europe and beyond. These events are free to attend, and attract an international online audience as well as being a way for all those in the University and elsewhere with an interest in the history of the built environment to come together as a community.
The year’s Semester 1 line-up of speakers is as follows:
30 September 2025 | The Expressway World: Rethinking Urban Motorways | Professor Richard Williams | Adam House, Basement Theatre and hybrid | 17:15BST |
14 October 2025 | The Delineation of Public Space in 19th- and 20th-Century England: An Urban Commons and its Re-enclosure? | Professor Katrina Navicka | Adam House, Basement Theatre and hybrid | 17:15BST |
28 October 2025 | Frame, Fortress, Fenestration: The Architectural ‘Enframings’ of Rwanda’s Forests, 1904 -2022 | Dr Killian Ó Dochartaigh | Adam House, Basement Theatre and hybrid | 17:15BST |
11 November 2025 | ‘The World’ and Charters Towers: Gold, Stock Exchanges and the Electric Telegraph in the First Era of Globalisation | John Macarthur | Adam House, Basement Theatre and hybrid | 17:15GMT |
25 November 2025 | Formal Symmetry, Artful Irregularity, and the Modernist Study of the Past | Shiben Banerji | Hunter Lecture Theatre | 17:15GMT |
4 December 2025 | The Construction of Meaning: Painted Architecture in Rogier van der Weyden’s Nativities | Dr-Ing. Dipl. Holzwirt Thomas Eißing and Dr Nathalie-Josephine von Möllendorff | 17:15GMT |
For further information, and booking for virtual attandance, please visit: https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/architectural-history-and-theory-seminar-series
Alex Bremner and Alistair Fair
Co-convenors, with assistance from Tommaso Zerbi