The STAY HOME project will host the international conference STAY HOME: New perspectives on the home on the 10th-11th of November 2022 at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. We invite speakers to deliver research and design perspectives on the home as a physical, social, digital, and existential place in past, present, and future. Read more about the conference and our Call for papers here.

What is home and how do we relate to, inhabit, shape, experience, and use it? Home is described in terms of shape, space, and scale, but also in terms of experiences, relationships, and emotions. During the corona crisis home became a central yet contested term. What does it mean to stay at home? What makes a home? What about those without a home? The pandemic might be a catalyst for thinking about home in new ways – not only as a safe or as a private space, but maybe also as an unsafe space or a space that is sometimes public or professional. We invite scholars to think with us about the home.

The aim of the conference is to share and discuss new perspectives on the home – in particular perspectives that emerge during crises and may inform future conceptualizations of human dwelling. We invite speakers to deliver research and design perspectives on the home as a physical, social, digital, and existential place in past, present, and future.

STAY HOME: New perspectives on the home is an interdisciplinary conference on the home hosted by the Danish research project STAY HOME: the home during the corona crisis – and after funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (2020-24).  The project investigates practices, experiences, and uses of the home during the corona crisis and afterwards, and includes subprojects on existential experiences, domestic violence, the digitalized home, and the spatial organization of the home. STAY HOME is conducted by an interdisciplinary team from the faculties of Theology and Humanities at the University of Copenhagen, The Royal Danish Academy: School of Architecture, and the IT University of Copenhagen. Read more about the project in English here.

Confirmed keynote speakers

  • Professor Joanne Begiato, School of History, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford Brookes University. Preliminary title: Making the [un]happy home: emotions, bodies, and spaces in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.
  • Chancellor’s Professor Paul Dourish, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine.
  • Associate Professor Hanna Reichel, Princeton Theological Seminary. Preliminary title: Home/alone? – Technologies of haunting and belonging.

Topics of interest: Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Feeling at home
  • Sharing home
  • Domestic claustrophobia
  • Missing home
  • Absent homes
  • Home and mobility
  • Dwelling and belonging
  • Home as an existential place
  • Forced home
  • Vulnerable safety
  • Home without a house
  • Sense of home
  • Boundaries and thresholds of the home
  • Hybrid homes
  • Imagining home
  • Smart or invasive home

Date and location: The conference takes place on the 10th -11th of November 2022 at The Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.

Types of presentations: It is possible to apply with a proposal for a paper presentation, a presentation by a research group or a poster. The conference language is English.

  • Paper presentations are 15-minute presentations based on original research.
  • Research group presentations are 20-minute presentations by a group of researchers working together.
  • Poster-presentations are graphic one-page posters (A2) exhibited throughout the conference and presented in a session dedicated to Q/A and discussion of individual posters.