What is Home?
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.
In the STAY HOME project, the home appears as both a physical, social, digital and existential place and the notion of home works as a gateway for conversations across disciplines. We do not seek to find a common or fixed notion of home nor do we cover all possible perspectives on or definitions of home. On the other hand, we aim for meaningful discussions and exchanges of different disciplinary and empirical notions of home within the project. We hope to continue and broaden these discussions of home, the domestic and human dwelling at our conference STAY HOME: New perspectives on the home on November 10-11 2022 at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.
Four academic disciplines are represented in the STAY HOME project: Architecture, History, Science and Technology Studies, and Theology. The meeting between these disciplines raise interesting questions about the home and give the individual researchers new perspectives on their own disciplinary definitions and engagements with home.
Katja de Neergaard, PhD Fellow within Science and Technology Studies at the IT University of Copenhagen is doing her research in the STAY HOME project on the digitalization of the home and the experience of privacy during the pandemic. About home in her research, she elaborates: “In my project, the home appears as something enacted through practices and as a pivotal site for exploring privacy. It is for example a space of state-mandated isolation, a relational space, and a sphere with particular conditions and expectations for privacy. Digital technologies, movements in and out of home, and individual circumstances, are all part of enacting the home and its conditions for privacy in everyday situations. Empirically, multiple versions of home are at stake in my material, and it is becoming clear that managing that space, including its boundaries and relation to the public, was challenging during lockdown.”
Katrine Rønsig Larsen, PhD Fellow within Family History at the University of Copenhagen is doing her research in the STAY HOME project on domestic violence during the pandemic and comparing with historical cases to analyze how the experiences of violence are historically contingent and culturally formed. In Katrine’s project, the home figures as a context for understanding family violence: “In my project, the home is first and foremost a setting for specific family practices and thus, it is important for understanding what violence is, where it happens, and how it unfolds. Today, violence in the family is often configured as hidden behind the walls of the home, which therefore requires a special societal effort to track down, contain and prevent. Historically on the other hand, there has been variations in whether or not violence appeared within or outside the home, in private or in public”.
Whatever many definitions and notions of home exist in research and everyday life, we dare to say that everybody has a relation to home, be it good, bad, absent, present or something in between. Thus, we hope to meet in fruitful and interdisciplinary conversations about the home at our conference in November and to share, challenge and expand the notions of home within the STAY HOME project.
We invite scholars from across disciplines to take part in the conference as a presenter or participant. If you wish to present at the conference find our Call for Papers here. The deadline for submission of proposals is April 15 2022, 12 pm CEST.