[Commlist] Call for Papers for Conference: Objects and Objectives

/Material History: Objects and Objectives/*
University of Brighton, 15-16 May 2025
The University of Brighton’s Material History Group welcomes 
participants and presenters to a conference on the topic of /Objects and 
Objectives/. The MHG is located within the University’s School of Art 
and Media, which has a long and esteemed history of colleagues 
conducting practice-as-research and research-informed teaching. The MHG 
builds on these foundations and is particularly interested in research 
that begins with and is conducted via objects and archives, whether by 
making, analysing, curating or teaching with them. We recognise that 
both the questions and answers that objects provoke as historical 
artifacts can be useful in furthering knowledge; as Peter N. Miller has 
noted,
There is more depth to the use of objects as evidence than we might 
think, and a more sophisticated inventory of approaches and arguments on 
which to draw than we might imagine. (/History and Its Objects, /2017)
Of what tactics and methodologies would this ‘sophisticated inventory’ 
consist, and what aims or purposes occasion the use of objects – from 
the humble, everyday and ephemeral to the rare, costly and unique – as 
the foundations of ways of teaching and researching?
While much emphasis today in terms of creative pedagogy is given to the 
possibilities of the digital, this conference aims to look in depth at 
the possibilities of the analogue, and therefore we welcome proposals 
for: practical hands-on sessions, such as for example involving 
papercrafts, yarn arts, quilting, collage, scrapbooking, etc; 
presentations in the form of video essay or other creative output; more 
traditional conference methods, with proposals for individual 
presentations or panels of three or four papers.
Presentation topics may include but are not limited to:

  * Guided making workshops which also explore objects’ meanings
    (between 45-60 mins)
  * Visual analysis of objects deemed significant (historically,
    pedagogically, in research terms, etc)
  * Synchronic or diachronic investigation of an object’s changing use
    and value
  * Exploration of specific archives or theories of the archive
  * Creative practice pedagogies
  * Consideration of objects as evidence
  * Inventories of methods and theories regarding material histories or
    object-based research
  * Object-based outputs of object-based inquiry

Please submit an abstracts of 350 words, three-five keywords and a 
biographical note of around 50 words to MHG at 
(REG-Material-Histories /at/ brighton.ac.uk). The closing date for submissions 
is 21 March 2025, and participants will be notified of acceptance by 4 
April.

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