The project MoMoWo1 Women’s Creativity since the Modern Movement, will organize a historical conference-workshop on women designers and architects between 1918 and 1945.

The MoMoWo conference-workshop2 aims for presentations of research papers in conjunction with dialogues, discussions and interviews with designers. This call invites the presentation of research papers which address one of the following themes and subjects regarding activities and lives of women designers, craftswomen and architects between 1918 and 1945:

  1. Concepts: avant-garde; traditionalism; modernism
  2. Exposure: general exhibitions; women’s exhibitions; solo exhibitions
  3. Persons: pioneers; duo’s; canonical designers
  4. Historiography:egodocuments;journals/magazines;visualsources;archive;websitecommunicationpower
  5. Politics and regimes: women designing under socialism, communism, fascism
  6. Industries: women in factories; women and war industries
  7. Education: private schools; art schools; design schools; polytechnics
  8. Environment:thelandscape;thecity;thecountryside
  9. The home: women designing for household appliances; or for the kitchen; or for interior design
  10. Organizations and networks: galleries; women’s clubs

We welcome papers which explore critical perspectives, such as the performativity of women; women’s interactions with public and private spaces; women’s operations under political regimes; women’s negotiations with gender bias in their profession. We will organize the conference-workshop around a limited number of paper-sessions with two papers each and attended by all to join the discussion and share visions and knowledge.

Paper presentations may take 25 minutes; final length of written papers is 5000 words max.
Papers will be peer reviewed before acceptance and as well as for publishing in a conference e-book. The conference will be held in English; use of English is the responsibility of the authors.

Please send your abstract of 300 words max, with your name in the file and in the format given hereafter to m.h.groot[at]hum.leidenuniv.nl

  • 1. MoMoWo is an EU cooperative research project. Participating partners come from six European universities: Turin Politecnico, Italy; Grenoble Université Pierre Mendès, France; Leiden University, The Netherlands; Lisbon IADE Instituto de Artes Visuais Design Marketing, S.A., Portugal; Ljubljana Znanstvenoraziskovalni center Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti, Slovenia; Universidad de Oviedo, Spain; SiTI Istituto Superiore sui Sistemi Territoriali per l’Innovazione, Italy.
  • 2. The 2015 conference-workshop will be the first of three historical workshops. The second conference-workshop covering the period 1945-1968 is planned for early October 2016 in Ljubliana, Slovenia. The third conference- workshop covering the period 1969-1989 is planned for early October 2017 in Oviedo, Spain.