What’s On
Five Houses by Edward Prior
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
This seminar explores five overlooked houses by E. S. Prior and what they reveal about his wider architectural thinking.
Barcelona Architecture Study Tour
Limited to 25 places
In the year that Barcelona has been designated 2026 World Capital of Architecture, join us touring some of the city’s most iconic landmarks. Discover the famous works of Antoni Gaudi. Led by expert historians and architects. A small group of up to 25.
Fasces and Missions: Religious Architecture and Historical Time in the Italian Empire
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
What role did religion play in Italian Empire-building? How was the past mobilised under fascist imperialism? The seminar seeks answers in the built environment.
Untold Tales: Women Pioneers in British and Irish Architectural History
The Third Annual Mark Girouard Symposium
This third symposium in memory of Mark Girouard looks at women’s contributions to architectural history in the United Kingdom.
Architect-Planners: Transnational and global perspectives
Supported by the SAHGB
Exploring the architect-planner across global contexts, this symposium examines the intersections of architecture, planning and urban change.
Translations from Drawing to Nothing: The Coventry Cathedral Competition’s Losing Designs and the ‘Faculty of Clairvoyance’
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Harry Foley
Fictive Spaces in Gothic Architecture: Lincoln Cathedral and Beverley Minster
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Michele Vescovi
Annual Conversation: ‘Mind the gap(s)’
Feminist approaches to architectural historiography
Voices of Experience intergenerational conversations (2016-24) and exhibitions (2019, 2025) reveal a wide scope of what is defined as architectural work, how it takes place and how this knowledge enters professional records and culture.
Looking Forward: Connecting, Informing & Engaging Architectural History through SAHGB’s Networks
SAHGB 70th Anniversary Event
In the afternoon of May 1st, preceding the annual conversation, SAHGB’s EDI & ECR Networks will host a 2-hour workshop on the theme of challenges and opportunities in architectural history today.
Craftspeople and the Building Revolution of the Seventeenth Century
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Steven Brindle
Panel Talk: Vanbrugh's Hidden Blenheim
Hosted by Donald Insall Associates, this panel talk will explore Vanbrugh’s original design of Blenheim Palace and on-site findings from the current £12m conservation project.
‘A wondrous bird is the Pelican’: The 1950s Revolution in British Architectural History
SAHGB Annual Lecture 2026
Speaker: Elizabeth McKellar
Through the Fires: The Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Dr Robyne Calvert
Beauty for the People: Architecture and the Queer Origins of the National Trust
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Michael Hall
2025 Annual General Meeting
The Annual General Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
The Alan Baxter Gallery, 75 Cowcross St, London.
Hostel, House and Chambers: Accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian Working Woman
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Emily Gee
9.5mm to 35mm, Rome to Greece: Architecture, Classical Antiquity, and the Silent Screen
Online Lecture
Speakers: Dr Aylin Atacan & Professor Maria Wyke
Architectural Historiography in the British Isles: National and International Perspectives
The Second Annual Mark Girouard Symposium
Since 1980, studies of the historiography of architectural history, as well as the institutional and cultural frameworks within which it is situated, have grown enormously. The symposium seeks to examine how the discipline has developed over the past forty years and to ask what forms architectural history takes today in Britain and Ireland.
Places of the Imagination: Painting the City in the Sassetti Chapel, Florence
SAHGB - IHR Seminar
Speaker: Caspar Pearson
Study Day to Lincoln Cathedral Close
Fully Booked
A day exploring the medieval close of Lincoln Cathedral, including insights by experts undertaking new dendrochronology research, and exclusive access to buildings not open to the public.
SAHGB ‘Future Heritage’ Conference 2025
This two-day SAHGB conference, supported by Docomomo-International and Docomomo-Scotland, will explore the idea of ‘Future Heritage’.
The Institutionalisation of ‘taste’ in Architecture: The British Construction of Chinoiserie in the 17th and 18th Centuries
This seminar will move beyond traditional frameworks of national identity and political history, exploring the unique role of personal encounters in constructing Chinoiserie architecture in 17th- and 18th-century Britain.
When is a Building Finished? Lessons from Late Medieval Architectural Culture
Since the Renaissance, architectural writers have often conceived the subject in terms of the design and the designer - prioritising them over the social context, the materiality of buildings, the methods of construction employed and their life in use, which usually involves physical alteration.
Carboniferous Creations: Victorian Gothic Revivalism and the Ecocritical Turn
In this lecture Alex will explore how we might interpret the modern Gothic Revival as a unique outcome not merely of industrialisation but of the carbon-based economy that drove it, suggesting an ecocritical historiography that foregrounds its environmental allusions and discontents.
The SAHGB Annual Lecture: A Conversation About the Shape of Buildings to Come
Convened and chaired by: Tanvir Hasan
Guest speakers: Tom Foxall, Niall McLaughlin, Ingrid Schroder, and Amin Taha
Difficulty and Delight: Unpacking the complexities of architectural success
This three-week in-person course explores the creativity and ingenuity needed to create buildings in all manner of environments. In collaboration with the RIBA.
Women in Building Construction in the Early Modern Period
Abstract:
In a session held jointly with the seminar Architectural History (SAHGB/IHR) and the Women’s History seminar (IHR), a panel of researchers who are leaders in the field of women in building construction will discuss and debate the role of women in the building trades in the Early Modern Period. Questions and issues which have reoccurred in historical research over many years will be considered. What trades did women undertake? Did women learn and exercise building skills? Did they apply them on site or in workshops (were they hands-on?)? The historical record is very uneven and often unclear. Historians have questioned whether it can be assumed that a woman named as a carpenter, plumber, mason, etc. actually was. Long-standing issues of widows, apprenticeship and women in business as builders will be aired and interrogated from the different perspectives of speakers.
For the history of women in building construction in Britain and Ireland in the Early Modern Period, the discussion brings together Linda Clarke, Conor Lucey, Amy Erickson, and Kirsty Wright and Elizabeth C. Biggs with an overview of European gender-based practices from Shelley E. Roff. After short papers of ten minutes the panellists will follow up with a discussion of issues arising from the presentations, both contested and agreed, with those attending the seminar in-person and online invited to take part.
Recording:
To view recordings of our past events, please ensure that your active SAHGB Membership is connected to a Digital Account.
Past Events
Annual Lectures
2026
Elizabeth McKellar, ‘A wondrous bird is the Pelican’: The 1950s Revolution in British Architectural History
2025
Tanvir Hasan, Tim Foxall, Níall McLaughin, Ingrid Schroder, Amin Taha, A Conversation About the Shape of Buildings to Come
2024
Paul Binski, Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages
2023
Tim Benton, Badovici’s Eclectic Modern: The Vézelay Houses
2022
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2021
Christine Stevenson, Telling Stories of the Great Fire of London
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