Call For Papers 'Space: From Theory to Practice'

Saturday 17 November 2012, Birkbeck, University of London

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Richard Hornsey, University of the West of England

David James, University of Nottingham

‘To what extent may a space be read or decoded?’

- Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space

The London Spatial Theory Reading Group has been running at Birkbeck, University of London, since October 2008.  In that time we have looked at spatial theory from writers such as: Gaston Bachelard, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Fredric Jameson, Stephen Kern, Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Franco Moretti, Georges Perec, Michel Serres, Georg Simmel, and many more.

To celebrate and showcase the range of interdisciplinary thinking this has generated, we will be holding a one-day symposium with a focus on bringing spatial theory to life.

We invite discursive papers that respond personally or provocatively to spatial theory, relating theories to lived experience or interrogating the encounter between theory and practice on the ground.

These meditations and explorations may want to consider questions such as:

Can spatial theory help us read our everyday lives?

What personal interpretations have we made of spatial theory?

What happens when theory challenges everyday practice?

Under a general theme of urban London we welcome musings that address:

Interior domestic space

Exterior city space

Textual / Fictional spaces

Conceptual spaces

Thresholds  / liminal spaces

Papers should be targeted at an informed, but not necessarily academic, audience.

Please send abstracts of 300 words for 20 minute papers to Lisa Mullen and Terri Mullholland at spacesymposium@gmail by Friday 31 August 2012. We look forward to receiving your proposal.