This summer symposium is organised by the Doctoral Researcher (DRN) and Early Career Researchers (ECRN) Networks of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC). This annual event – taking place this year at the University of Bristol – is designed to give new voices prominence, centring recent and innovative research which advances and complicates British art and architectural history, broadly defined. In this context, the very concepts of “Britain” and “Britishness” are open to critical questioning.

Contemporary culture is being revolutionised by digital advances: how is this technology changing the past, present and future of British art and architecture? We invite submissions that respond to the breadth of this question, from artists engaging with generative AI to curators creating online exhibitions and researchers utilising pioneering digital methodologies. We aim to showcase and explore the practice and scholarship of British art and architecture at its cutting edge, encompassing both practical applications and sociopolitical themes.

The following questions are designed to suggest or provoke topics for discussion:

How do we, or can we, define the “Digital Age”? How does this complicate our understanding of “British” art and architecture?
How has digital technology or the emergence of digital humanities led to new ways of thinking about art and the artist's role?
How do we, or can we, define the frontiers of physical, digital and cyberspace?
How do themes of the digital interact, undermine or compliment the urgency of decolonial and anti-racist practices?
What kinds of thinking, epistemologies and colonial practices come with, and are embedded into, the data tools, skills and methods integral in institutions of British art and architecture?
What unconscious biases are present in the coding that underpins digital preservation and online display of digitised artworks?
How can we engage in decolonial and anti-racist approaches to data for arts and humanities in the British context?

Submissions are open to doctoral students and early career researchers, but we particularly welcome submissions from artists, curators and those outside of traditional academic structures, including those who have not presented at conferences before or those who are returning after a career break. We invite abstracts for papers of fifteen minutes in length, as well as submissions beyond this traditional format, including creative-critical writing, visual essays, digital/online installations and forms of performance.

Submission Details
Submission deadline: Sunday 18 May 2025, 11.59pm BST

Please submit the following to both drnpaul-mellon-centre.ac.uk and ecrnpaul-mellon-centre.ac.uk:

- an abstract/summary (no longer than three hundred words)
- a biography (approximately one hundred words)

Submission Guidelines:
- All abstracts/summaries must be submitted and presented in English, in either PDF or DOCX format.
- Abstracts/summaries should be based on any of the topic areas listed above, or in related areas.
- Applications in other formats, such as video or audio, are also welcomed.

Successful submissions will be notified via email in early June.

Reasonable travel expenses will be provided for speakers, with priority given to support independent researchers and/or those experiencing financial precarity.