This international conference aims to bring together scholars interested in the history of the education of interior designers. Interior design’s pedagogical practices have been little researched, yet they are vital to understand the discipline’s increasingly autonomous position throughout the 20th century – professionally, economically, and epistemologically. Please find the call for papers and the submission guidelines above.

Keynote speaker of the conference is prof. John Potvin (Concordia University), an established scholar in the history of interior design whose work reflects on the impact of gender associations on the perception and professionalization of the discipline. The conference is organized within the framework of the research project ‘The emergence of interior architecture in Belgium, 1945-1999. Assessing the impact of education on the identity formation of the design discipline’ (2020-2024). This project is funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and is conducted at the University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Sciences, and KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture.

A report of this conference can be found on the website of the SAH Historic Interiors Affiliate Group website.