Call for Papers for Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene Symposium
Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene is part of the MoHoA global collaborative and builds on the Modern Heritage of Africa symposium hosted by the University of Cape Town in September 2021. Coordinated by The Bartlett’s Professor Edward Denison and Head of the University of Liverpool’s School of Architecture, Professor Ola Uduku, along with partners at the University of Cape Town, the Africa World Heritage Fund and around the world, this upcoming hybrid symposium responds to an age of planetary crisis in which a precarious present reflects an inequitable past and a perilous future.
The international railway settlement of Fushun (northeast China), with its modern town planning and the Ryuho Colliery, built by Denang and Siemens, and home to one of the world’s largest open cast mines in the 1930s.
Modern heritage in all its forms and from around the world is the subject of this multidisciplinary symposium, presenting the paradox of being of modernity and yet threatened by its consequences. MoHoA was originally conceived within an African context to interrogate this paradox because the continent encapsulates the historical inequities that characterise the modern and its associated notions of development and progress while also facing the highest rates of urbanisation over the next 30 years, demanding new approaches to the past and present that achieve equitable and sustainable futures on a planetary scale. The outcomes of the two symposia will synthesise in the recognition of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage.
Call for papers
Submissions are invited from researchers, academics, and practitioners. The organisers are seeking papers or equivalent submissions that critically engage with reframing, re-evaluating, decentring, and decolonising recent, hidden or marginalised pasts in pursuit of achieving more equitable, just, and sustainable futures. Participants will contribute to the completion of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage, supporting policy change at a global level through our partner UNESCO.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
Practices of coloniality, decentring and decolonising history and historiography
Considerations and conceptualisations of multiple modernities
Modern heritage and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Planetary futures and the Anthropocene
Infrastructure and (post)-industrial heritage
Combining culture and nature, and the role of natural heritage in society
Public space and memory: memorialisation, commemoration and remembering
Modern heritage and the World Heritage Convention
How to submit
Submissions should be in English or French and should be emailed to mohoa@ucl.ac.uk by 31 May 2022.
Notification of acceptance will be provided by 30 June. Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words or equivalent format (e.g. film shorts, blog, or Instagram story) for other types of digital submissions.
Selected papers or presentations will be published as part of the MoHoA Book Series after the conference and selected extended papers will appear in a special edition of the journal ‘Curator’.
We are pleased to announce the launch of the 2022 ASAUK biennial conference titled: “Diaspora Remittance Flows: Restitution, Culture and Capital”. This is an innovative conference which seeks to harness the global two-year involvement with online communications with our physical engagement with conferencing which we hope will return in 2022. This conference is conceived to enable our research colleagues in Africa (Ibadan, Nigeria and Nairobi, Kenya) to be part of the research conversation at the 29th ASAUK biennial conference, via the zoom media platform. We also will be running a smaller traditional in-person conference in Liverpool addressing this and other ASAUK member-determined themes.
Running from August 31st – September 4th, 2022, the ASAUK Biennial conference will be a unique two-part conference. With British Academy funding, the first part will take place entirely online and involve ASAUK research colleagues based in Ibadan and Nairobi engaging in the conference themes from Africa based platforms shared across Africa and Liverpool in the UK. This will be followed by a smaller, traditional in-person conference, hosted by the ASAUK at the University of Liverpool.
We invite you to attend the online conference, which is entirely free, and also to come to Liverpool for the ‘in-person’ conference, taking place from Friday 2nd – Sunday 4th September. The Liverpool conference will have a smaller audience, and conference panel requirements planned to pre-empt possible ongoing Covid health advice on conference size and appropriately spaced and ventilated conference facilities. Taking this into account, there will be online access to the physical Liverpool conference for a reduced fee.
THE ONLINE CONFERENCE 31st August – 2nd September
IBADAN-NAIROBI-LIVERPOOL
Restitution, Culture and Capital
This is an entirely free to attend conference (with registration required).
Hosted by ASAUK colleagues at the IFRA Institute, at the University of Ibadan and the BIEA, Nairobi, the online conference has been directly funded by the British Academy, with generous supplementary funding from the BIEA. It will be delivered entirely online from both Ibadan and Nairobi, using the Zoom platform. Working closely with the Institutes in Ibadan and Nairobi, these interactive conferences will be broadcast on two consecutive days, from Ibadan on Wednesday 31st August and Nairobi on Thursday, 1st September. The final part of the online conference will be broadcast from Liverpool on Friday 2nd September, jointly chaired by the ASAUK and RAS presidents.
We expect to curate and edit the key papers, from Ibadan, Nairobi and Liverpool that will be discussed at this unique online conference series. These with support from the British Academy will form the basis of the ASAUK publication Restitution Culture and Capital in Africa and the Diaspora, a trans-national conversation which will elaborate on the themes of the conference through the publication of the keynote papers and also the responses as recorded by participants at the three conference platforms.
The panel session themes and keynotes for the three day online conference are as follows:
HOSTED ONLINE FROM IFRA, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN
Curated by Vincent Hiribarren, Director IFRA Ibadan
Ibadan Session 1. DIASPORA FLOWS OF CULTURAL ARTEFACTS TO AND FROM AFRICA
Prior to the online sessions keynote speakers will discuss their papers with Africa-based ECRs in workshop format.
THE LIVERPOOL ASAUK 29th BIENNIAL CONFERENCE
FRIDAY 2ND – SUNDAY 4TH September 2022
The ‘in-person’ Liverpool Conference follows the traditional panel theme format. Whilst the panel theme titled: “Diaspora: Restitution, Culture and Capital“, follows on directly from the online conference, we invite proposals for other panel themes.
As this is planned to be a smaller conference we call on panel proposers to ensure all panel proposals are sent in to the ASAUK conference team by 31st March, 2022. All proposals need to have the names of the 3 – 4 paper givers, and their abstracts submitted by the 31st March deadline. This will enable us to plan the conference space and facilities required. It will also mean that we can work to ensure that any documentation required for proposed international participants who might need this will get processed on time. We realise that this is different from the traditional conference format but hope you will join us for this unique, innovative conference in 2022. The 30th April is the later deadline for individual paper proposals. Due to the smaller conference format, space for individual papers will be limited and we encourage paper givers to consider working with emerging panel themes which will announce from February onwards.
The 29th ASAUK biennial conference dinner will be held at Liverpool University’s Victoria Gallery and Museum on Saturday 3rd September. This will also be the venue for announcement and awards ceremony for the Audrey Richards prize, the Fage and Oliver prize and the distinguished Africanist awards ceremony.
For more information about the 29th ASAUK conference. Please contact the conference organisation team via the email address: asaukconference22@gmail.com. Panel proposals, comprising the 3 – 4 papers with abstracts, can also now be sent to this address.
We will be providing further information as the conference details develop on our website and via social media.
From the 1950s to the late 1980s, the politics and economies of foreign aid — instigated by both the ‘capitalist West’ as well as the ‘communist East’ — gave rise to a whole infrastructure destined to assist the progress of ‘developing countries’ on their ‘path to development’. The various North-South exchanges that took place in the name of ‘development’ have left a deep imprint on the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
(1) Bertil Melin, the Swedish director of the Nordic Tanganyika Project in Kibaha, showing a model of low-cost housing to (2) President Julius Nyerere, c. 1963-64. To the far left, (3) Mr. Dennis, the carpenter who made the models, co-designed the housing project, and “test-lived“ in the first constructed house with his family. From Torvald Åkesson, ‘Education – In Marble Halls or Under Trees. Low-Cost Houses in East Africa, Especially Ethiopia and Tanzania’, compiled self-published report, c. 1965, Stockholm. Collection KTH Library.
Largely instituted through bilateral relations between individual states, these ‘aid’ initiatives involved not only financial and material resources but also various forms of knowledge and expertise; as such, the modalities of this global, foreign aid-funded infrastructure boosted the creation and reinforcement of all sorts of institutional actors to efficiently exchange knowledge — largely through training courses, educational programs and/or research projects. In the light of widespread rural migration and intensive, rapid urbanization processes, expertise on the built environment was a particularly salient form of knowledge to the aims of foreign aid. Hence, architecture, urbanism and planning were no strangers to an emerging foreign aid-funded knowledge economy — a context in which the production and circulation of knowledge were intimately tied to the political-economic value attributed to them by foreign aid diplomacy.
How did architectural knowledge figure in foreign aid-sourced international relations, and what frameworks were set in place to efficiently exchange that knowledge?
For this two-day symposium, we seek scholarly work that critically analyzes, contextualizes, or theorizes the establishment and functioning of such institutional actors, training courses, educational programs, research centers, and other infrastructures for knowledge exchange that emerged under the aegis of development and targeted ‘Third World’ clients. We welcome a wide range of methodological and creative perspectives as well as less empirical (but well-informed) theoretical approaches that interpret this phenomenon from a postcolonial or decolonizing perspective. We also encourage contributions that scrutinize the intersections of these histories with discussions of gender, race, religion and nationalism.
The 20th anniversary of the Modern Heritage Programme, jointly initiated by UNESCO, ICOMOS, and DOCOMOMO, in 2021 presents a timely and important opportunity to reflect on the transformative cultural experiences and global consequences of the recent past that heralded the dawn of the anthropocene and its many impacts on climate, society, and the planet. Despite these impacts, the ‘modern’ era and its legacies are comparatively undervalued and overlooked, and disproportionately concentrated and interpreted in ‘the west’. MoHoA contends that Africa’s experiences of plural modernities include the positive and negative, colonial and post-colonial, tangible and intangible, urban and rural, culture and nature. This will need greater scholarly attention and can be instructive and transformative in framing modernities and modern heritage globally, as well as addressing the challenges of sustainability continentally. On the one hand, Africa’s contemporary cities, many of which are products of modern encounters, face the highest rates of urbanisation in the world over the next half a century, straining populations and resources, urban landscapes and rural hinterlands, and placing modern heritage at serious risk of alteration or destruction. On the other hand, the unique human settlement patterns in Africa, provides a new dimension, reflected in the cultural landscapes, “combining works of nature and humankind, they express a long and intimate relationship between peoples and their natural environment”.
The African World Heritage Fund has identified modern heritage as amongst the most marginalised heritage categories on the continent, demanding investment in research and documentation to better protect, increase resilience and subsequently Africa’s representation on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Through improved methods of understanding and assessing significance, raising public awareness and promoting inscription on local or global registers, Africa’s modern heritage has a vital role in contributing to rural and urban sustainability in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the New Urban Agenda (NUA), the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and the Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) Approach.
MoHoA plans two symposia over two years and a series of supporting thematic workshops. The first symposium, focusing on Africa, will be hosted by the University of Cape Town in September 2021 and titled ‘Modern Heritage of Africa’. The second will be global in scope and hosted by The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) in 2022 and titled ‘Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene’. The outcome UCT symposium will lead to proposing a ‘The Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage’ supporting efforts to modify international policy and guidance on modern heritage in line with present and future planetary challenges of ecological, social and economic equity. This will be presented to the World Heritage Committee as part of the reporting exercise and as a side event at the relevant Committee Session. The UCL symposium will discuss the wider implications of the MoHoA globally.
We invite submissions to the International Symposium on the Modern Heritage of Africa and welcome papers and other forms of communication including video, music, performance and literature accompanied with a commentary and interpretation focusing on any of the following themes evolving from the brain storming isivivana last August, highlighting both cultural and natural heritage, the tangible and intangible and their symbiotic relationships:
Considerations of modernities in Africa
Modern Heritage and Sustainable Development in Africa (SDGs)
Infrastructure development, particularly industrialization and transportation systems, as activators of modernism in Africa
Natural heritage and its role in society, linking culture and nature
Public spaces, memorialization and commemoration in postcolonial Africa
Modern Heritage of Africa and the World Heritage Convention
Any other theme not covered by the above
Abstracts: Contributions with African experiences of modernities and the sharing of heritage knowledge and we welcome abstracts of up to 300 words or equivalent format (e.g. film shorts, blog, Instagram story) for other types of digital submissions. For general reference in terms of format – see below. To submit an abstract, email: modernheritageofafrica@gmail.com
The abstracts: Date to be finalised
forming results: Date to be finalised
Publication: Selected papers or presentations will be published as part of the Modern Heritage of Africa Book Series to be published after the conference.
Audience: academia, heritage fields, professionals and practitioners from diverse disciplines addressing the tangible and intangible, culture and nature, documentation, archives and collections. We encourage participation from colleagues and institutions from Africa, particularly from youth and women.
Networking: Institutions of African Studies, Schools of Cultural Studies, Architecture and Planning – African Union and professional bodies.
Languages: Français and English
Dates:22 and 23 September and 24 September, South Africa Heritage Day 2021
Venue: University of Cape Town, South Africa
Participation: online registration will be required and is free; a $50 donation will be welcome.
Format: The MoHoA symposium will be a virtual, hybid, academic event, a dialogical field capable of moving beyond disciplinary boundaries with social and cultural exchanges. To ground its activities and foster dialogue, we invite proposals, ranging from operational practices to speculative and theoretical questionings. These can be presented in written, built, coded, drawn, figured, imagined, filmed, modelled or in any other format (do not hesitate to consult with us for any exotic format or idea!).
Contributions may take the following forms:
Paper presentations that will be shared and discussed through joint working sessions and panel discussions. These might include theoretical work, but also case studies and project reports. To submit your paper proposal, you must submit an abstract of up to 300 words.
Projects, models, images, devices, pieces of coding, hardware and all other kinds of contributions. These must be submitted by sending a 300-word optionally illustrated abstract in the form of a single PDF including text and images (max 5mb).
Contributions can be signed individually or collectively.
Contributors are welcome to submit more than one proposal in one or more formats. If selected, all contributors are responsible for covering the costs of sending their work in time for presentation. The conference is led by the University of Cape Town and planned virtually with a possible physical component on campus; please state if you would able to attend in person.
If selected, contributors might be assigned to a 15-min paper/project presentation session or a debate session to discuss their work. Or both. These might be done in person, by possibly attending one of the conference’s sites, or remotely. The final format and topics of the sessions will be configured once all submissions have been received, so it is possible and desirable that participants will be grouped in thematically coherent yet interdisciplinary sessions.
Architectural Training and Research in the Foreign Aid-Funded Knowledge Economy, 1950s-1980s.
Two-day symposium, KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm, 9-10 September 2021.CALL FOR PAPERS / Submission deadline: 1 April 2021.
From the 1950s to the late 1980s, the politics and economies of foreign aid – instigated by both the ‘capitalist West’ as well as the ‘communist East’ – gave rise to a whole infrastructure destined to assist the progress of ‘developing countries’ on their ‘path to development’. The various North-South exchanges that took place in the name of ‘development’ have left a deep imprint on the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Largely instituted through bilateral relations between individual states, these ‘aid’ initiatives involved not only financial and material resources but also various forms of knowledge and expertise; as such, the modalities of this global, foreign aid-funded infrastructure boosted the creation and reinforcement of all sorts of institutional actors to efficiently exchange knowledge – largely through training courses, educational programs and/or research projects. In the light of widespread rural migration and intensive, rapid urbanization processes, expertise on the built environment was a particularly salient form of knowledge to the aims of foreign aid. Hence, architecture, urbanism and planning were no strangers to an emerging foreign aid-funded knowledge economy – a context in which the production and circulation of knowledge were intimately tied to the political-economic value attributed to them by foreign aid diplomacy.
How did architectural knowledge figure in foreign aid-sourced international relations, and what frameworks were set in place to efficiently exchange that knowledge?
For this two-day symposium, we seek scholarly work that critically analyzes, contextualizes, or theorizes the establishment and functioning of such institutional actors, training courses, educational programs, research centers, and other infrastructures for knowledge exchange that emerged under the aegis of development and targeted ‘Third World’ clients. We welcome a wide range of methodological and creative perspectives as well as less empirical (but well-informed) theoretical approaches that interpret this phenomenon from a postcolonial or decolonizing perspective. We also encourage contributions that scrutinize the intersections of these histories with discussions of gender, race, religion and nationalism.
This two-day symposium will be held in Stockholm on 9-10 September 2021. In light of the current pandemic the event will be organized either in a hybrid format, allowing for both in-person and online attendance, or, if health regulations dictate, as a fully online event. The symposium is envisioned as one long, thematically well-focused discussion, without parallel strands, and aims to bring 12 to 15 established as well as young scholars together from every discipline that engages with the topics outlined above. We’re happy to receive anonymized abstracts of up to 300 words and 1 optional image until 1 April 2021, submitted via email to architectureforeignaid@arch.kth.se. Acceptance will be dependent on an anonymous review of the abstract by the scientific committee. If a different format than that of a presentation based on a paper would be more suitable to your work, please contact us (same deadline applies).
Scientific committee: Sebastiaan Loosen (KTH), Erik Sigge (MIT), Helena Mattsson (KTH), Viviana d’Auria (KU Leuven) and Kenny Cupers (University of Basel).
Please find the full CFP attached and visit our website for up-to-date information: architectureforeignaid.arch.kth.se Best regards Sebastiaan Loosen, Erik Sigge & Helena Mattsson
Transnational Architecture Group 