The AHRA PhD Symposium 2026 takes place on 29 and 30 June.
The symposium is held in a hybrid-format in Sétif (Algeria), Norwich University of Arts (Britain) and TU Delft (The Netherlands).
Deadline: 15 March 2026
Symposium theme
Research in the architectural humanities rarely moves in a straight line. It develops through fragments of observation, incomplete archives, tentative sketches, unexpected encounters, and reflections that may never make their way into a finished thesis or publication. This symposium, En Chantiers: Field Notes in Progress, foregrounds the provisional and the unfinished as productive spaces of inquiry. By placing emphasis on field notes; broadly understood as the marks, traces, and records of ongoing research, this symposium invites doctoral students to reflect on how knowledge is gathered, tested, and re-shaped in practice.
Participants are encouraged to share snapshots and assemblages of their current work: questions that remain unresolved, methods under construction, and the contingent moments that shape the research journey. We are particularly interested in contributions that examine how incompleteness, instability, or ambiguity can be mobilised as critical tools within architectural humanities research.
The emphasis on research practice for this symposium stems, in part, from an awareness of the growing impact of new digital knowledge tools that operate within other epistemic modes. If such tools, including ‘artificial intelligence’, are used in a contribution, their use and role should be made explicit and critically examined in the proposal itself.
Applicants may wish to consider (but are not limited to) the following areas of inquiry:
Divagation: Fieldwork and Methods
· Negotiating positionality, subjectivity, and authorship in architectural research
· Failures, gaps, and uncertainties as productive aspects of methodology
· Leftovers and discarded pieces of research
· Unfinished, abandoned, or repurposed architectural projects
· Temporality, ephemerality, destruction and (climate) change in built and natural
environments
· Intuition, slowness and irrationality as modes of research
Récits: Narratives and Representation
· Visual, sonic, or performative modes of documenting research-in-progress
· Field notes as creative writing, fiction, or poetic practice
· Narratives for sustainable pasts and futures
Conscience: Ethics and Responsibility
· The ethics of observing, recording, and representing communities or places
· Reflexivity and care in dealing with sensitive or contested sites
· Critical reflection on experiences with ‘artificial intelligence’ tools, potentials and risks in relation to architectural humanities research
Submission details
The symposium consists of paper sessions and workshops. Paper sessions consist of 15 minute presentations. Workshops are structured for three-minute ‘snapshots’ of an issue, interest, or curiosity followed by a discussion. Scholars are invited to submit abstract proposals of no more than 300 words. Submissions can be made here.
The call is now open and closes by 15 March 2026. For more information and questions, please visit the website.