Call for Papers




Menu                                 The Call for Papers is now closed. Given the large amount of proposals we received, it may take more time than usual to send confirmations of receipt. Successful candidates will be notified in early 2025. For all additional queries, please send an email to microhistoriesofarchitecture@gmail.com.


Rather than limiting its scope to a particular theme, period or geography, this conference instead places emphasis on a specific method. We ask historians of architecture, cities and landscapes to come together to discuss the promise of Microhistory for our field and its particular relevance for the current moment. We invite our participants to bring their trifles, marginalia and scant evidence, and to use these to write architectural histories from perspectives, subjectivities and mentalities that have hitherto been excluded from our accounts. We welcome papers on any geography and chronology, from antiquity to the very recent past, but we will prioritize those that focus on under-represented geographies and periods of history, or those that shed light on previously unknown aspects of canonical projects and topoi and bring them in contact with broader narratives and historiographical traditions.
Peter Darch, woodcuts from Der Spiegel der Menschen Behaltnysse (Speyer, ca. 1495). Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress) https://lccn.loc.gov/65058964


Contributions may include:

  • Close examinations of architectural or material details (which contradict canonical typologies, stylistic and cultural taxonomies, or periodologies).

  • Close readings of text sources on architecture beyond canonical architectural discourse: accounting books, minutes of trials, ownership records, correspondence, etc.

  • Close readings of marginalized voices that were involved in the making of the built environment or specific buildings, as evidenced through archival sources, but also speculative or counterfactual history and critical fabulation (albeit on the basis of historical evidence and context).



  • Histories of dissonant voices or of conflict within an architectural project or the life of a building or city (particularly if they can help de-centre the voice of the architect and the patron by bringing in those of the craftsperson, labourer, servant, etc.).


  • Local, vernacular, indigenous and non-academic accounts of specific buildings and cities, including non-canonical archaeologies and uses of the past and its monuments (from vernacular spolia to popular lore).

  • Depictions of canonical architecture from a lay-person’s or subaltern perspective, as well as depictions of the subaltern, or of subaltern architecture in canonical works of painting, literature and art in general.

  • Histories of Microhistory in architecture: how architectural writers and historians have tried to apply the method of Microhistory to the study of the built environment – whether successfully or not.

Proposals should include an abstract of no more than 400 words and an author’(s) bio (ca. 200 words per author), in one PDF file. Abstracts will be evaluated primarily on the basis of the suggested method and their relevance to the conference theme, but also in terms of thematic originality and exploration of previously unknown or marginalized topics or perspectives. Contributions should be the result of original research and should not be previously published or in the process of being published elsewhere.