Seminar 4: The History of the Welfare City and its Historiography

Description

Seminar 4: The History of the Welfare City and its Historiography

This seminar was the last in a series of four events that aimed to critically discuss the representation of the welfare city. In this context, the term ‘welfare city’ refers to the concept for urban areas developed in Scandinavian countries during the second half of the twentieth century. The seminar was conceptualized and organized by the transdisciplinary international IRFD-funded research network The Representation of the Welfare City.
Hosted by the Aarhus School of Architecture this seminar asked: How do histories and historiographies work as representations, and what do they represent? The seminar discussed different Welfare architecture histories and historiographies. It reflected on discursive positionings, theoretical approaches and genres, and investigated how the history of the welfare city and its architecture has been written. Who wrote it, and in what way? What is included in the history/histories, and what is left out? More specifically, the seminar wanted to look into the normative narrative in the history of the Danish (and Nordic) welfare city and its architecture. Along these lines, it also pursued the role of illustrations – e.g. drawings and photographs – in the textual presentation of the histories and discussed how they work as representations.

The Representation of the Welfare City
The international research network The Representation of the Welfare City, a transdisciplinary project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (IRFD), was initiated in 2021 by Anne Elisabeth Toft, PhD (Network Project Leader), Associate Professor, AAA; Jannie Rosenberg Bendsen, PhD (Network Coordinator), Independent Researcher, AAA; Tom Nielsen, PhD, Professor, AAA; Claus Peder Pedersen, PhD, Professor MSO, AAA; Morten Nielsen, PhD, Professor, National Museum of Denmark; Thordis Arrhenius, Professor, KTH; Michelle Provoost, PhD, Professor, Crimson Architectural Historians / Institute for New Town; Karen Olesen, Associate Professor, AAA; and Anders Troelsen, Professor Emeritus, AAA. The network aims at investigating the welfare city’s image in society and how it is constructed. It will uncover and discuss the major factors that are at play in this context.

Period	15 Feb 2024 → 16 Feb 2024
Event type	Conference
Conference number	4
Location	Aarhus, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International