Call for Papers

  • 27–28 March 2025

    Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, Bute Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3NB

    https://litarchcardiff.wordpress.com

    Organisers

    Dr Peter N. Lindfield (Cardiff) and Professor Fiona Robertson (Durham)

    This interdisciplinary conference aims to address the multifaceted links connecting architecture and literature in a variety of historical periods and cultures. Focused case studies through to broader surveys crossing time and space are welcome, as are applied contributions by practitioners engaging with these subjects. 

    We invite proposals from a range of disciplinary approaches, including:

    • literary studies

    • architecture/architectural history

    • art/art history

    • theatre studies

    • design/design history

    • heritage and conservation studies

    Topics and questions may include:

    • words and architecture: writing spaces

    • writers as architects; architects as writers

    • literary sites and their interpretation

    • imaginary houses

    • constructed communities and identities

    • preservation, conservation, and ‘improvement’

    • spaces for reading and performance

    • shared concepts (originality, revival, symbolism, inspiration, group identity, spiritual expression)

    • environment and ecocriticism

    • the built environment’s impact upon literary form and expression

    • writing and building in new technologies (AR, VR, games)

    • new practices and publics

    Confirmed Keynotes

    • Professor Klaske M. Havik (TU Delft): Poiesis: Methods of Spatial Imagination

    • Professor Jane Griffiths (Wadham College, University of Oxford): Architecture, Memory, and Inscription in Early Modern Literary Practice


    250-word proposals should be submitted via an online form before 6 February 25.

Awards

We are looking for work that is innovative, ambitious and rigorous in the history of the built environment. Previous winners of our awards and prizes have gone on to have esteemed careers in architectural history and heritage.

The process of the awards generally opens around March each year, with phases of nomination, followed by shortlisting, reading, and decisions for the results that are made in the Autumn. We accept nominations and self-nominations online.

Support our Work

We have been able to extend our activities significantly through the generosity of those members who have made donations or left bequests to the Society, and are enormously grateful to all those considering making a gift of any size.