Central to human life and experience, habitation forms a context for enquiry within many disciplines. Co-editors Dr Antony Buxton (Continuing Education, University of Oxford), Dr Linda Hulin (Archeology, University of Oxford) and Dr Jane Anderson (Archeology, Oxford Brookes University) join this Book at Lunchtime event to discuss this collection. Bringing together perspectives on human habitation in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, social history, material culture, literature, art and design, and architecture, significant shared themes are the physical and social structuring of space, practice and agency, consumption and gender, and permanence and impermanence. Topics range from archaeological artefacts to architectural concepts, from Romano-British consumption to the 1950s Playboy apartment, from historical elite habitation to present-day homelessness, from dwelling “on the move” to the crisis of household dissolution, and from interior design to installation art. Not only is this volume a rich resource of varied aspects and contexts of habitation, it also provides compelling examples of the potential for interdisciplinary conversations around significant shared themes.

Antony, Jane and Linda are joined by:

Dr Cathy Oakes (History of Art, University of Oxford)

Dr Oliver Cox (History, University of Oxford)

This event will be chaired by Professor William Whyte (History, University of Oxford).

Lunch available from 12.30-13.00, discussion from 13.00-14.00. Free and all welcome.

Part of Book at Lunchtime, a fortnightly series of bite size book discussions, with commentators from a range of disciplines.