The British Archaeological Association invites paper proposals for the BAA-sponsored session at the 2027 International Medieval Congress (IMC), taking place at the University of Leeds from Monday 5 to Thursday 8 July 2027.
This session explores the ways in which material culture—particularly buildings, architectural sculpture, art objects, and the practices surrounding their production and use—participated in the formation, negotiation, and expression of community identities in the medieval world. Bringing together approaches from architectural history, archaeology, art history, and social history, the session asks how communities were materially constituted and how material environments in turn shaped ideas of belonging, collective identity, and social distinction.
The session is particularly interested in the relationship between communal patronage, communities of artisans, and the buildings through which communities represented themselves. Medieval buildings were rarely the products of isolated patrons or individual makers. Their construction and embellishment depended upon networks of patrons, donors, craftsmen, workshops, institutions, and users. These relationships could produce distinctive material expressions of collective identity, while also revealing tensions over status, authority, resources, and participation.
Potential papers might consider:
- Material culture of communities: how objects, architectural elements, furnishings, and decorative programmes articulated collective identities;
- Communal patronage: the ways confraternities, guilds, civic bodies, religious communities, and other collective groups commissioned and funded buildings and works of art;
- Communities of artisans: workshops, craft networks, mobility, collaboration, and the transmission of architectural and artistic practices;
- Buildings and community identity: how churches, guildhalls, civic buildings, hospitals, bridges, and other communal spaces embodied or contested ideas of belonging;
- Building practices and social relationships: what construction processes can reveal about cooperation, hierarchy, expertise, and collective organisation;
- Memory and community: the ways in which buildings and objects preserved, transformed, or invented communal histories.
Rather than treating buildings and works of art simply as expressions of pre-existing communities, the session seeks to examine how material culture actively made communities. Who, for example, was represented on a building or in a painting, who was excluded, and who had the authority to determine its appearance? How did participation in building projects create or reinforce social relationships? And how might archaeological and architectural evidence allow us to recover communities whose identities are poorly documented in written sources?
The session would therefore complement the broader IMC 2027 theme of ‘Communities’ while offering a specifically material and interdisciplinary perspective. It would be particularly suited to papers that combine close analysis of buildings or objects with questions of patronage, production, use, identity, and social organisation.
Proposed format: 3–4 papers of approximately 20 minutes each, followed by discussion. The session could include case studies from different geographical regions or periods in order to encourage comparative discussion of how medieval communities used material culture to construct and communicate collective identities.
Proposals should include:
- Paper title
- Name and affiliation (if applicable)
- Contact details
- Short abstract of 50–100 words
Please send proposals to comms@thebaa.org by Monday 21 September 2026.
Prospective participants should familiarise themselves with the IMC’s conference fees and bursary arrangements before submitting a proposal.
The wider IMC welcomes proposals across all areas of Medieval Studies and in all major languages. Further information about the Congress and its 2027 theme is available on the IMC 2027 website.