CSDI - The Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior, based at the Royal College of Art in London, brings together three institutions: the Royal College of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bedford Centre for the History of Women at Royal Holloway, University of London. Launched in September 2001, its goal is to develop new histories of the home, its contents, and its representation. It pursues research into the changing appearance and layout of rooms in a range of buildings, from tenements to palaces; the objects that furnished those rooms; the ways rooms and objects were depicted; the manner in which people used them; and how they thought about them.

Age, Gender and Domestic Culture
Royal Holloway, University of London
3 July 2004

This one-day interdisciplinary symposium will address the importance of age and gender to domestic culture in historical and contemporary communities. The event aims to facilitate broad discussion across disciplines, bringing together social, cultural and design historians, anthropologists and sociologists from a range of national and international universities working on a variety of domestic environments. The event seeks to encourage comparisons between research approaches and also between the domestic cultures of different periods and different social groups. The themes that will be addressed include the experience of old age and the concept of home; the construction and experience of childhood; the relationships between paid and unpaid members of a household; age, gender and the representation of domestic settings; and changing roles and authority within domestic environments according to lifecycle and gender.

The programme, booking forms and further information are available on the Bedford Centre website: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/bedford-centre/agegendcult-2.html. Please contact Beverley Duguid, bedford.centre@rhul.ac.uk (tel: +44 (0)1784 414 098) for further details.

This event is organised by the Bedford Centre for the History of Women, Royal Holloway and the AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior.