This is a Call for Papers proposals for the 2026 European Architectural History Network (EAHN) conference, taking place in Aarhus, Denmark, 17-21 June 2026.
Abstracts are invited for the paper session listed below by September 19, 2025, 23.59 CET. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted directly to the chairs, along with the applicant’s name, email address, professional affiliation, address, telephone number and a short curriculum vitae (maximum one page).
The Call for Papers, including detailed information on paper length and content, is also available on the EAHN website: https://eahn.org
Timeline:
Call for Papers deadline: Friday, 19 September 2025, 23.59 CET
Final selection of abstracts by chairs and communication to General Chairs: November 2025
Registration for Chairs and speakers: until Friday, 13 March 2026, 23.59 CET
Early Bird Registration: until Friday, 17 April 2026, 23.59 CET
Late Registration: after Saturday, 18 April 2026, 00.00 CET
Conference Dates: 17-21 June 2026
SUMMARY
Disability x Architectural Production: Bodily Diversity in the Construction of the Built Environment
A Session for EAHN 2026 Aarhus chaired by:
Dr Megha Chand Inglis (Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL: m.inglis@ucl.ac.uk)
Dr Nina Vollenbröker (Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL: nina.vollenbroker@ucl.ac.uk)
This session invites contributions which share our conviction that it is important to consider architecture’s histories through the diversity of bodies that construct our built environment.
Diverse individuals make up the architectural production workforce, and recent architectural histories have paid much-needed attention to marginalised voices, addressing, for example, gender, culture, and race in the construction of the built environment. Making buildings, however, is deeply linked to a further critical factor which remains under-researched: disability (including deafness, neurodiversity, and chronical illness).Many construction workers identify as disabled (approx. 20,000 in the UK), and architectural production systems are a key cause of disability.
At the same time, disabled bodyminds make distinct creative contributions to architecture. Overlooking disability within architectural production reinforces problematic spatial perceptions which create certain bodies as less impactful, less modern, or less worthy than others and sidelines the generative and creative potential of disability and difference.
As examples we highlight:
the proposed deskilling of construction labour, advocated by architects including Albert Kahn (1918), to allow eco¬nomic integration of the war-wounded.
the Viennese settlement project, including the construction system designed by Adolf Loos (1920-1), which envisaged disabled veterans as co-operative producers.
the bush-hammering of concrete at the Barbican Centre, London (1962-1982), which resulted in black construction workers contracting neurological damage.
the widespread silicosis in India’s contemporary temple building industry, revealing a lack of care towards adivasi (tribal) stone carvers.
the spatial practices of deaf contractors changing perceptions of how disability can organise construction sites, counter discrimination, and create networks of solidarity.
Lately, Critical Disability Studies has gained traction in architectural discourse, but its concerns remain limited to building users and, more recently, to disabled architects. It therefore seems crucial to bring the bodies and minds of those who make our architecture to Disability Studies.
Similarly, architectural history has been invigorated by the emergent field of Production Studies, advancing critical understandings of relationships between the design of the built environment and the labour of constructing it. However, it does not yet specifically address disability.
Using both fields’ historical, methodological, and political concerns, this session encourages the explorations of new architectural histories focusing on social and spatial justice from the vantage of disabled bodies. Papers might address urgent questions such as:
What is the creative potential of disability in the construction workforce and how has this played out historically?
How can research at the intersections of Disability Studies and Production Studies problematise the fast and able productive body working in capitalist regimes of labour?
How do production systems and processes affect the world of disabled users, architects, and builders?
Equally, themes might include: the disabling nature of building work; disabled architects’ and designers’ relationship to construction sites; stories of solidarity or marginalisation (e.g. disabled building users employing disabled builders; the construction industry’s historically difficult relationship with legal frameworks and employment practices).
Overall, approaching the construction of the built environment through a non-normative lens, this session highlights histories, bodies, and design and building practices usually left in the shadows of architectural scholarship.
