Registration for the LISTEN pedagogy workshops on 5 and 6 April 2024 is now open, here, to SAHANZ members who wish to view the opening conversations, and workshop activities. Please view the agenda for the times of each session.
How can architectural historians meaningfully and sensitively engage with decolonising and Indigenising the curriculum we teach? How can we trace histories of the diverse 'ways of being, knowing and doing' that are embedded within
multiple worldviews? How do we decolonise our own practices as historians, as teachers and as members of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), to further develop respectful and responsible engagement with Country,
with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Māori and Pasifika Peoples and their knowledges?
We believe the first task is to Listen. By ceding our voice to the leadership, guidance, and advice of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Māori, and Pasifika cultures and people we can begin this process. With this in our minds and hearts, Listen
proposes a series of workshops led by leading and emerging Indigenous scholars to explore modes of collaboration to develop approaches for expanding, reconfiguring and redefining architectural histories an the histories, pedagogies, and practices
of our discipline.
The traditional Eurocentric canon of architectural history is ill-suited to respond to the growing need to holistically understand, engage, and transform the rapidly changing world in which we live. That history, largely of colonisation and oppression,
fails to address knowledges and experiences from the peoples who have inhabited places other than Western Europe. There have been notable and laudable attempts to expand the scope of architectural history taught in western academia to include more
diverse understandings of architecture and design and how meaning and purpose may be embodied in the built environment. The Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative and the Teacher to Teacher Workshops by the Society of Architectural Historians
are such initiatives. However, the aim of this year’s SAHANZ pedagogy workshop is not to supplement the European canon, but rather to listen and learn in order to co-create strategies for teaching, practice, and life that reject and dismantle
Europe’s outsized and undeserved role as the measure of historical endeavour. This will also lighten the cultural load currently being placed on Indigenous scholars and practitioners.
The themes and topics of the workshops will continue to develop in dialogue with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Māori, and Pasifika scholars and practitioners over the course of the two days. We will facilitate alongside the workshop leaders to
support the development of foundational papers/documents that will explore approaches to the teaching, learning and practice of architectural history. Following the workshops, preliminary outcomes will be further co-developed for publication and other
potential outputs.
