Architectural Humanities Research and Enterprise Group

The Architectural Humanities Research and Enterprise Group (AH-REG) at the University of Brighton supports and facilitates humanities research into architecture and the built environment across its various schools and related disciplines.

The group develops new research in the history and theory of the discipline and the profession of architecture, and beyond that to more interdisciplinary approaches that mobilise the knowledge and methods of the humanities. We hence see the architectural humanities in light of the rise of new interdisciplinary fields such as the health, medical, and environmental humanities, alongside the use of new tools and methods in the digital humanities. The work of the group is driven by its members’ individual research questions and framed by some of the following more general disciplinary questions.

What precisely do we understand by the architectural humanities though? Do we work towards establishing the architectural humanities as a new discipline, distinct from architectural history and theory? Do we mean engaging with the various fields gathered under the umbrella term ‘humanities’—such as anthropology, archaeology, history, law, literature, philosophy, and others—in architecture? How do we understand and frame a field of interdisciplinary architectural knowledge that draws from and at the same time contributes to the arts and humanities? What is the role of humanities research in architecture in general, at a time when an emphasis on design and technology prevails within the discipline and its institutions?

The Architectural Humanities Research and Enterprise Group (AH-REG) is a platform for developing collaborations between its members for either conferences, exhibitions, grant applications, or co-authored work. We work very closely with the active Early Career Researcher network and with our Postgraduate Research Students.