St. Louis collage with text ATTN: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE URBAN HUMANISTS URBAN HUMANITIES GLOBAL (UN)CONFERENCE 2 WHERE: ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI WHEN: October 16-18, 2025 The Urban Humanities Network convenes its second signature event, the (Un)Conferenc
Meander map, logos of Urban Humanities Network, Vanderbilt University, Engaged City, Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, UHI, Global Urban Humanities, UArizona Department of Public Applied Humanities, Princeton Mellon Initiative, and the following text: Es
Meander map, logos of Urban Humanities Network, Vanderbilt University, Engaged City, Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, UHI, Global Urban Humanities, UArizona Department of Public Applied Humanities, Princeton Mellon Initiative, and the following text: Es

(Un)Conference Schedule Overview

A detailed program will be shared in late August

Thursday, October 16
8:30-9:30a: Check-in/Registration, Breakfast & Coffee (provided)
9:30-10:00a: Welcome
10:00-11:30a: Pre-workshops (concurrent sessions)
11:30a-1:00p: Lunch (provided)
1:00-2:30p: Pre-workshops (concurrent sessions)
4:00-6:00p: Lighting talksFriday, October 17
8:30-9:00a: Breakfast & Coffee (provided)
9:00-11:00a: Experiential & Site-Specific Sessions (Concurrent Sessions)
12:00-1:00p: Lunch (provided)
1:00-2:00p: Mini-Workshops
(Concurrent Sessions)
2:00-3:00p: Mini-Workshops
(Concurrent Sessions)
4:00-6:00p: Poster SessionSaturday, October 18
8:30-9:30a: Breakfast & Coffee (provided)
9:30a-12:00p: Experiential, Site-Specific, and Mini-Workshop sessions
(Concurrent Sessions)
12:00-1:00p: Lunch
1:00-2:30p: Roundtables
(Concurrent Sessions)
2:30-4:00p: Roundtables
(Concurrent Session)
4:00-8:00p: Keynote, dinner & celebrationSunday, October 19
(4-hours) Time - TBA: Optional Mississippi River canoe trip with Big Muddy
(limited seats, additional costs required; registration coming soon)

Hotel Block Registration: Coming Soon

We are pleased to offer a range of session formats designed to foster engagement, dialogue, and exchanges. Each format invites participants to actively engage with the presenters and materials in unique way:

  • Site-specific & Experiential Sessions: These sessions extend beyond the traditional conference and into the St. Louis region -- offering place-based experiences that ground ideas in the region. Engage with research and methodologies in situ, through walking tours, installations, field activities, and on-site investigations.

  • Pre-Workshop: Designed for focused engagement, these sessions begin with pre-circulated materials—papers, syllabi, project briefs, or design research—distributed in advance. Participants come prepared for thoughtful, focused dialogue, offering a space to engage peers in meaningful critique, reflection, and discussion around evolving work.

  • Mini-Workshop: These interactive, hands-on sessions introduce participants to new tools, methods, practices, or approaches. Through guided activities and collaborative exercises, attendees will gain practical insight into emerging methodologies.

  • Public roundtable discussions: Each roundtable speaker will begin with brief remarks framing their perspectives, followed by an open-ended, self-directed discussion. Audience engagement is central—participants are encouraged to contribute questions, ideas, and provocations that help shape the evolving conversation

  • Lightning talks: These 5-minute, high-energy presentations showcase a range of work—from early-stage research and in-progress scholarship to experimental initiatives and project pitches. This format is ideal for surfacing emerging ideas, testing concepts, and identifying potential collaborators in a dynamic, fast-paced setting.

  • Poster Session: The poster session will open with a focused discussion on experimental exhibitions, offering critical insight into urban humanities focused exhibitions. Following this, attendees are invited to engage directly with poster presenters in an open, conversational format.

List of Registered Participants

  • Åbo Akademi University

  • Black Heritage Society of Eufaula, AL

  • Cal Poly Pomona

  • California State University, Channel Islands

  • California State University, Fresno

  • Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX)

  • Champlain College

  • Columbia University

  • Concordia University

  • Florida International University

  • Gabriela Los Angeles

  • Harvard University

  • Hunter College

  • IDEO

  • Independent planning and economic development practitioner

  • James Madison University

  • Kwantlen Polytechnic University

  • Lawrence Technological University

  • Miami University

  • Office Of: Office

  • The Ohio State University

  • Place It

  • Princeton University

  • Queen Mary University of London

  • Royal College of Art

  • San Francisco State University

  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago

  • Southern California Association of Governments

  • The New School; Laboratory for Urban Spatial and Landscape Research

  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  • Universite Sorbonne Paris Nord

  • University College London

  • University College of the North

  • University of Arizona

  • University of Arkansas-Fort Smith

  • University of California, Los Angeles

  • University of California, Berkley

  • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • University of Colorado Boulder

  • University of Manitoba

  • University of Michigan

  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • University of Notre Dame

  • University of Southern California

  • UW-Milwaukee

  • Vanderbilt University

  • Velaslavasay Panorama

  • Wabash College

  • Walking Cinema

  • WashU

  • Wayne State University

  • Yale University

CONFERENCE BACKGROUND

Building on the success of the inaugural (Un)Conference 1 in Tucson, AZ, in March 2023, the Urban Humanities Network (UHN) warmly invites Letters of Interest (LOI) for participation in (Un)Conference 2 at Washington University in St. Louis.In the spirit of the Urban Humanities, we are issuing an open call for LOIs to participate in our upcoming convening. We invite submissions showcasing work at the intersections, edges, and territories of design, urban studies, and the humanities.At this critical juncture of the urban humanities, we ask: what are the key and emerging practices driving the urban humanities today? How are the entanglements of disciplines, landscapes, histories, movements, narratives—and more—bringing to light overlooked, underwritten, or previously unknown histories concerning urban places? What still needs to be filled, addressed, and imagined? Each of our respective relationships and varying approaches to urban humanities practice, situated in our embodied and site-specific knowledge, will inform our collective response to these questions.

Urban Humanities Network Logo, What's Next?, Urban Humanities Global (Un)Conference, Where: St. Louis, When: October 16-18, 2025, blue water waves in the background.

PROGRAMMING OVERVIEW

From October 16-18, 2025, we will continue navigating toward the practice and future of urban humanities in St. Louis at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). WashU is proud to host (Un)Conference 2 and is excited to share the areas in which they have cultivated focused efforts toward urban and public humanities scholarship and practice.Programming will include opportunities for participants to share their emerging or completed work through a variety of sessions including engaged workshops, mini-workshops, lightning talks, and/or a set of place-based experiences to foster deeper exchange. It is our aim that all attendees will actively contribute to the programming.In particular, St. Louis, with its critical geographical setting at the confluence of two culturally rich watersheds and its multifaceted and complex history of racial, cultural, and economic intersections as well as creative spatial practices, will guide our attention.We will visit multiple neighborhoods in the St. Louis region as a through-line of place-based engagement making connections to adjacent St. Louis places, histories, and latent narratives.
-Themes to explore in programmed activities include:Practices and Methods of Urban Humanities: sharing creative scholarly methods, deploying new practices, testing field-focused approaches; considering where/how the urban humanities are situated within different institutionsMovement & Migrations: reflections on historiography, silences in the archive, reading against the grain, critical fabulation, counter-narratives; within the context of St. Louis, we are especially interested in watersheds, highways, movements and migrations of people, ideas, or materialsUnEarthing (ReEarthing): movements, studies, acts, and practices that daylight overlooked; underwritten, or previously unknown histories; intersections between this work and civic engagementFluidity: embracing the ever-changing dynamic state of the field and place; calling attention to the ebb and flow of space, histories, and power, and the consistent fits and starts of collaborationsEntanglements: connections, legacies, and bindings; engagements towards a shared understanding of disciplines (humanities + Design), cultural landscapes, (people + place), diasporas (movement + settlement), narratives, materials, and imaginaries (Utopias + Protopias)

List of Registered Participants

Meander map, logos of Urban Humanities Network, Vanderbilt University, Engaged City, Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, UHI, Global Urban Humanities, UArizona Department of Public Applied Humanities, Princeton Mellon Initiative, and the following text: Es

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