Announcing the ‘Parliament Buildings’ Conference: Call for Papers

How can we rethink our political institutions by investigating the buildings in which they are accommodated? ‘Parliament Buildings’ is a conference convened by Sophia Psarra, Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design at The Bartlett, with the UCL European Institute. It is funded by UCL Grand Challenges of Cultural Understanding.

The one-day virtual conference will take place on 12 November 2020.

Call for papers

“In the face of ongoing political change, confidence in democracy is waning – calling upon us to rethink our political institutions and the buildings in which they are accommodated.

– Sophia Psarra

We invite contributions from architecture, political science and political theory, history, law, geography and associated disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The conference seeks to engage parliament buildings in Europe, shifting attention from their monumental expression to the spatial construction of political practices and traditions. 

Issues to be discussed in the conference will include: how parliament buildings in Europe shape concepts of their political selves and of the body politic; how they relate to broader political culture and ideology; how they can shape collective identities, national narratives and the future of Europe; and how performance art could be used to re-imagine political debate in contemporary society. The aim is twofold: to explore the role of politics in architecture and architectural theory; to explore the place of architecture and spatiality in political science and the social sciences.

Some of the questions we would like to address include the following:

• How do parliament buildings shape concepts of their political selves and of the body politic?
• How do their real and televised spaces structure political practices within; what parliaments do and how, and what kind of politics and policies they produce?
• How do parliament buildings relate to the broader political culture, ideologies and consciousness in which the parliamentary work is embedded?
• How do spaces, narratives, ceremonies and insignia shape collective identities, democratic practices, and citizen participation?
• How do they enable, structure and constrain political representation?
• Can we resist destructive politics re-imagining how parliaments can shape the diverse national narratives and the shared narrative of Europe in the future?
• Can experiments with performance art in re-created parliamentary settings help re-imagine the space of political debate in contemporary societies?

We plan to publish an edited volume based on contributions to the conference. 

Deadline for abstracts: 15 June 2020. 
Send your proposal summary (500 min – 700 max words, including title and references) to: s.psarra@ucl.ac.uk and c.sternberg@ucl.ac.uk.

Image: General view of the interior of The Commons Chamber at the Houses of Parliament in central London. Photograph by Justin Tallis.