Absence: SAHANZ/AUHPH Annual Conference 2026 

Our cities and landscapes are pockmarked by evidence of absence. Architectural, landscape and planning practices and their histories are similarly marked; by the unbuilt and unrealised, by the demolished, by the invisible and the hidden. And absence is often as telling as presence. What happens to those things you can’t see: those things that have been obscured, elided, or forgotten either by time, by design, or through selective memory? Who advocates for them, and what effect do they have by being brought into the light? Where do they go, and who sees them?

This conference seeks to make the hidden visible, and to articulate and understand what is overlooked, hidden, or missing, engaging with the idea of absence in the built and designed environment in all its myriad forms and machinations: absences of people, structures, places, ideas, or representation, by design, neglect, or by force.

Absence 2026 is a joint conference of the Australasian Urban History Planning History Group and the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand.

For further information please contact the Convenors on absence-2026@unimelb.edu.au

The keynote speakers Dr Elizabeth Darling, Associate Professor Jiat-Hwee Chang and Professor Julia Gatley participation in this Conference is supported by the Macgeorge Bequest.