Techne Congresses

Techne organises two residential congresses per year, which are designed and run by each member institution in turn. These events are primarily for Techne-funded students, although other doctoral students may be welcome to attend. Please direct any queries to techne@rhul.ac.uk. 

The next Techne Congress is taking place on 09 and 10 January 2025 and is being hosted by University of the Arts, London.

"Revisiting the founding principles of the technē Doctoral Training Partnership the UAL curated congress in January 2025 will reconsider the notion of 'technē'.

technē, arises from the ancient Greek word to describe craftsmanship, craft or art, and was also applied to the human ability to realise intentions and organise actions through making, doing and performing. In our technological culture it relates to notions of expertise, technical knowledge, and the shaping of our life-world. technē and its corelate technologies, are never solely tools, never simple prostheses, surrogates, or mediators, rather they need to be understood as often material and embodied, entangled with "the knots we call beings", with what it is to be human (Haraway 2008: 250).

Whilst such knots and such knowledges are central to arts and design, and to living and living well, they have historically been overlooked by epistemological institutions. As such, this conference reconsiders the value and development of thinking through making, craft, technique, and technology in practice research
in arts, design and humanities contexts. This congress seeks to critically explore imaginative practices of world-building, which contest previous understandings of “human” practices of crafting and cultural production, resituate the technē of diasporic and indigenous practices, and examine the critical debates in contemporary posthumanist theory in the context of creative processes (eg. Zakiyyah Jackson’s discussion of Wangechi Mutu’s collages, 2020). Expanding practice research to other disciplines and to living, we probe how technē makes a difference in the world, for, technés are dynamic and engendered in relation to others and to worlds, so how we craft and who is crafting, matters.

We ask:
• How might we utilise the concept of technē to explore the methods, implications and outcomes of arts practice, through both contemporary and historical means?
• How is craft, crafting, and skill, skilling, located and manifest in contemporary research?
• How does technē inform and shape practices for living: our bodily affordances, social constructions and ultimately our crafting of the worlds we live in?
• How does technē give us lenses to explore the intersections between human and non-human realms, revealing the techniques, knowledges and expertise of other organisms?
• What are the intersections and ethics of embodied, material and digital technologies?
• What are the ecologies, politics and economies of making beyond manufacture?"

Current Techne students may click the below links to access a host of information about the upcoming event, including the schedule, venue details and important information for attendees.

Past Congress Information:

June 2024: 'The Scholar's Voice' - Hosted by the University of Roehampton.

The scholar’s voice is a term that is used to encapsulate professional identity, as well as to refer to the originality and authenticity of the communication of ideas. The identity of the scholar is bound up in the development of communication and engagement – in writing, in speaking, in dialogue, in movement and presence, in creative practice, and in teaching – in other words, the authorial voice. It is there in how scholars present themselves to others too, and within the corporeality of their voice – the embodiment of their voice in physical presence.

Yet it is important to recognise that the scholar’s voice is curated and mediated by several converging practices, behaviours, actions and non-actions. This Congress explored these ideas and issues, featuring panels, lectures workshops and more.