Program (preliminary)
Here you find our program for CHAT | HOPE!
Please note that this is a preliminary program which is subject to change until all speakers have confirmed their attendance.
Day 1 – 29 October 2026
| 09.00–09.15 | CHAT Opening and Welcome of Participants | Organising Team |
| Session 1 | Hope Within Total Institutions | |
| 09.15–09.35 | Hope in Captivity | Claudia Theune, University of Vienna |
| 09.35–09.55 | Gardens of Hope: Archaeological Excavation and Restoration at a World War II Japanese American Confinement Site | Jeff Burton, National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site |
| 09.55–10.15 | Numbering in Nazi Concentration Camps as a Material Practice: Control and Hope in an Archaeological Perspective | Tommy Theine, Barbara Hausmair & TAGS-Team, University of Innsbruck |
| 10.15–10.30 | Discussion | |
| 10.30–11.00 | ~ Coffee Break ~ | |
| Session 2 | Hope During and After War | |
| 11.00–11.20 | Götterdämmerung 1945: Survival Strategies of German Archaeologists and Historians in the Czech Lands at the End of the War and the Beginning of Peace | Jan Hasil, Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague |
| 11.20–11.40 | Hope in the Liberated Pilsen 1945: Archaeology of the 109th Evacuation Hospital | Pavel Vařeka, James Symonds, Tomáš Pancíř, Roman Křivánek, Petr Netolický & Zdeňka Vařeková, University of West Bohemia |
| 11.40–12.00 | The Heritage of Hope in a North American Small Town During the Cold War | William Caraher & Susan Caraher, University of North Dakota & Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission |
| 12.00–12.15 | Discussion | |
| 12.15–13.45 | ~ Lunch Break ~ | |
| Session 3 | Urban Communities and Hope | |
| 13.45–14.05 | Futures in Ruins, or the Multigenerational Project(s) of Imagining Worlds in Rubble (Film) | Patricia G. Markert, University of Western Ontario |
| 14.05–14.25 | Hope as Method: Materialising Hope During the PhD | Brodhie M. I. Molloy, University of Leicester, United Kingdom |
| 14.25–14.45 | Can Domestic Material Culture Be a Symbol of Hope Against Coloniality? Reflections from Lima, Peru | Aldo Accinelli Obando, University of Amsterdam |
| 14.45–15.00 | Discussion | |
| 15.00-15.30 | ~ Coffee Break ~ | |
| Session 4 | Jouyful Hope | |
| 15.30-15.50 | Peace, Love, and What Was Left Over: Hints on Counterculture from a 1980s Waste Assemblage from Schloss Trautson (Tyrol, Austria)? | Elisabeth Waldhart, University of Innsbruck |
| 15.50-16.10 | Rural Dance Venues in 20th-Century Finland – Archaeology of Encounters in a Dwindling Countryside | Aleksi Kelloniemi, University of Oulu |
| 16.10-16.30 | The Ski Village: A Materiality of Hope at Sheffield’s Most Flammable Attraction | Rebecca Hearne |
| 16.30-16.45 | Film: “Compared to All Other Swimming Fellow Creatures Man Performs Miserably” | Sefryn Penrose & Angela Piccini, Bureau for the Contemporary & Historic (ButCH) |
| 16.45-17.00 | Discussion | |
| 17.00-18.00 | ~ Break ~ | |
| Session 5 | Posters & Installations | |
| 18.00-19.00 | Foyer Artwork | Frances Marr & Carolyn Marr, University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney |
| – | Houses of Hope: The Biographies of Two Houses in Zagori (NW Greece) | Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou |
| – | Yarn Charms: Creative Grounds for Hope | Susan Pearson, University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney |
| – | The Paper Project: Community Building Through Upcycling | Natalia Sawicka, University of Wrocław |
| – | Unboxing the Collection: Repurposing Dormant Archives as Creative Teaching and Learning Tools | Laura Thompson, University of Manchester |
| – | Flags Is It? Signalling Hope | Lara Band, Historic England |
| – | What Would the Holy Ten Say? Modern Transformations of a Small Cretan Village | Anna Bertelli, Ruhr University Bochum |
| – | Long-Term Genealogies of Solidarity: Women, Memory, and Materiality in the Upper Ribeira Valley (São Paulo, Brazil) | Marianne Sallum, Marina Gomes, Lúcia Aparecida, Francisco S. Noelli, Wendel Dalitesi |
| – | Resistance and Hope: Exploring the Influence of Greek Antifascist Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War | Jaime Almansa-Sánchez, Ali Zahid, Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou, Pablo Gutiérrez de León Juberías, Alejandra Galmés, Nota Pantzou, Anna Rosenberg |
| – | Paenitentiam agere: a prison for serious offenders in Stuttgart (1851-1901) | Lennart Schmarsli, University of Tübingen |
| Resisting hostile border policies in the southern North Sea: Towards a creative public archaeology of clandestine Channel crossings | Adam Swennen, independent archaeologist | |
| – | Hope Against Erasure: Memory and Science in the ‘Lexicon of Katyn Archaeology’ Project | Olgierd Ławrynowicz, Aleksandra Krupa-Ławrynowicz & Sebastian Latocha |
| 19.00–21.00 | CHAT & UIBK Evening Reception with fingerfood, drinks and music | |
| late night | Pub Time at Zappa |
Day 2 – 30 October 2026
| Session 6 | Messianic Hope | |
| 09.00–09.20 | Maria Spes Mea – Hope and Divine Assistance on Medieval Swords from the Tyrolean Region (12th–15th Century) | Florian Messner, University of Innsbruck |
| 09.20–09.40 | Charnel Houses Between Pragmatism and the Hope for Physical Resurrection on the Day of Judgement | Stefanie Heim, University of Innsbruck |
| 09.40–10.00 | Aching Societies, Radical Hope, and the Roots of the Capitalocene in Oceania: The Late 17th-Century Colonisation of the Mariana Islands | Matilde Carbajo, Pompeu Fabra University |
| 10.00-10.15 | Discussion | |
| 10.15–10.45 | ~ Coffee Break ~ | |
| Session 7 | Displacement and Hope | |
| 10.45–11.05 | Archaeology and the Restoration of Dignity: The Case of the Italians of Patras | Nota Pantzou & Francesca Plateroti, University of Patras & Independent Researcher |
| 11.05–11.25 | Hope Documented: Traces of Refugees on Lampedusa | Geesche Wilts, Carl-Albrechts-Universität Kiel |
| 11.25–11.45 | Unexpected Hope in Greece’s Borderlands: Reinterpreting Material Traces of Undocumented Migration | Johannes Jungfleisch, Ruhr University Bochum |
| 11.45-12.05 | N.N. | Anonymous |
| 12.05-12.20 | Discussion | |
| 12.20-14.00 | ~ Lunch Break ~ | |
| Session 8 | Environmental Hope 1/2 | |
| 14.00-14.20 | Between Rubble and Rajya: Archaeology of Infrastructure and Resistance in Ayodhya, India | Laaraib Ghazi, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| 14.20-14.40 | Enduring Ephemera: Material Repetition as Resistance to US Nuclear Policy | Ella Goulding, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| 14.40-15.00 | A Hope and a Host Rock | Alexander Kolibaba, University of Fribourg, Department of Geosciences |
| 15.00-15.15 | Discussion | |
| 15.15-15.45 | ~ Coffee Break ~ | |
| Session 9 | Environmental Hope 2/2 | |
| 15.45–16.05 | Radical Starch | Claartje Rasterhoff & Christian Ernsten, Maastricht University, the Netherlands |
| 16.05–16.25 | Hope in a Landscape of Extraction and Coercion: The Guaneras of Mejillones, Northern Chile | Catalina Soto Rodríguez*, Alejandra Didier Pérez* & Wilfredo Santoro Cerda**, *Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano & **Consejo Patrimonial de Mejillones |
| 16.25–16.45 | The Transition to Renewable Energy: A New Hope or the Same Old Story? | Dan Lee*, Mark Jenkins**, Antonia Thomas*, Anne Bevan*, David Atkinson***, Jen Harland*, *University of the Highlands and Islands, **Independent Researcher, ***University of Hull |
| 16.45-17.00 | Discussion | |
| 17.00-18.00 | ~ Break ~ | |
| Session 10 | Movies | |
| 18.00–19.00 | Movie: What’s Left Lasting | Lucy Carr-McClave |
| 18.00–19.00 | Geography of an Archive | Nicole Khayat & Vesna Lukic, Middlesex University & Independent Scholar |
Day 3 – 31 October 2026
| Session 11 | Queering Hope | |
| 09.00–09.20 | Excavation Futures: Hope, Trans-Temporality, and Speculative Archaeologies of a 21st-Century Trans+ Community Centre | Owen Hurcum & Helmut De Nardi, University of York + Trans+ Learning Lab CIC |
| 09.20–09.40 | Hoping for the Future, Materializing Other Pasts | Sandra Montón-Subías, Universitat Pompeu Fabra |
| 09.40–10.00 | Who Tells Your Story? Diversifying Narratives of the Past Through Storytelling as an Archaeological Method | Hanna Steyne, University of Manchester |
| 10.00-10.15 | Discussion | |
| 10.15–10.45 | ~ Coffee Break ~ | |
| Session 12 | Hope and Town Transformations | |
| 10.45–11.05 | Hope! The Core of Contemporary Archaeology | Jobbe Wijnen, independent contemporary archaeologist |
| 11.05–11.25 | The Old Ghosts of NewTown: Can Neoliberal Development be Hope? For Whom? A Case Study in Kolkata, India | Anena Majumdar, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| 11.25–11.45 | “The Hope of the Indigenous Is Absolutely Revolutionary”: Approaching Pluriversal Politics and Development Failures in the Andes | Francesco Orlandi, University of Macerata and University of Exeter |
| 11.45-12.00 | Discussion | |
| 12.00-13.30 | ~ Lunch Break ~ | |
| 13.30-14.30 | Roundtable: Is There Hope for Contemporary Archaeology? | Laura McAtackney, Sarah May, Susan Pollock, Caroline Jaus, Thomas Meier & Andreas Pantazatos, moderated by Attila Dézsi Schlingmann |
| 14.30-15.00 | General Discussion and Goodbeys | |
| 15.00-15.30 | ~ END OF CONFERENCE except for workshop participants ~ | |
| 15.30-17.00 | Seeing the Wild Possibilities of Domestic and Captive Animals: A Workshop Activity | April M. Beisaw & Konstantina Saliari, Vassar College, USA & Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria |
| 17.00-18.00 | Meeting of the CHAT Standing Committee (Open to Everyone Interested) |
Please note that this is a preliminary program which is subject to change until all speakers have confirmed their attendance.
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