Published on Friday, February 13, 2026
Abstract
This symposium is aimed at doctoral students and ECRs working on topics related to architectural humanities and invites participants to share work-in-progress, field notes, or methodological explorations.
Announcement
Argument
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
Scholars are invited to submit abstract proposals of no more than 300 words.
Please apply here
The symposium will consist of paper sessions and workshops. Paper sessions will consist of 15 minute presentations. Workshops are structured for three-minute ‘snapshots’ of an issue, interest, or curiosity followed by a discussion.
The AHRA PhD Symposium will take place on 29 and 30 June 2026. The symposium will be held in a hybrid-format in Sétif (hosted by HCA Foundation), Algeria, Norwich University of Arts, Britain and TU Delft, Netherlands. Sessions will be held in person at one location, and broadcast online to the other two locations. Participation is free.
The call for abstract is now open and closes by 15 March 2026.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent in April.
Registration as a non-participant will open in April.
For questions, please contact: AHRA.PhD@gmail.com
Locations and languages
The AHRA PhD Symposium will take place on 29 and 30 June 2026.
The symposium will be held in a hybrid-format between
- Delft, the Netherlands
- Sétif, Algeria
- Norwich , Britain
Sessions will be held in person at one location, and broadcast online to the other two locations. Participation is free.
When submitting a proposal, participants will select the location where they would like to present in person. Presentations will be live-streamed in the other locations.
We as organisers would like to facilitate a multilingual event. If you wish to present in a language other than English please indicate this on your application. For reviewing purposes, please submit two abstracts: one in your chosen language, and one in English.
Symposium Organisation: 3-in-1
The symposium takes place in three locations that are digitally wired together. This experimental new format will necessarily entail various detours, creative solutions, messy translations and is in itself a work-in-progress, as we together re-invent the symposium. The use of different languages further adds to the bridging nature of the event. We hope that this physical-digital symposium contributes to finding new research relations between researchers and research groups in the hubs in Algeria, the Netherlands, Britain, and beyond.
Convenors
The AHRA PhD Symposium is jointly convened by:
Algeria Hub Committee
Dr. Assia Samaï-Bouadjadja; Pr. Amina Abdessemed-Foufa, Khaoula Hannachi in collaboration with HCA (Heritage, City, Architecture) Foundation
Delft Hub Committee
Soscha Monteiro de Jesus, further committee to be announced (Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft, the Netherlands)
Norwich Hub Committee
Prof Teresa Stoppani; Sarah de Villiers (L Architecture); Gustavo Balbela (GAA); Megan Brien (Architecture and Interior Design, Norwich University of the Arts, United Kingdom)
Subjects
- Representation (Main category)
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Research and researchers
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Epistemology
- Mind and language > Representation > Architecture
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Methods of processing and representation
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Corpus approaches, surveys, archives
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Digital humanities
Places
- Sétif, Algeria (19000)
- Delft, Holland
- Norwich, Britain
Event attendance modalities
Hybrid event (on site and online)
Date(s)
- Sunday, March 15, 2026
Keywords
- architectural humanities, methodology, positionaliy, fieldwork
Reference Urls
Information source
- Khaoula Hannachi
courriel : khaoula34000 [at] live [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« “En chantiers”: Field Notes in Progress », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, February 13, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/15ovc
