Talking Records

Talking Records 2026: Spaces and places of care

Symposium date

Monday 7 December 2026

Location

In-person at The National Archives, Kew

The 2026 symposium will explore histories of care and welfare and their intersections with histories of spaces and places. These histories leave complex traces in archival collections, entangled with histories of medicine, public health, poverty, government, social security and more.

Histories of welfare and care can be found across the collections at The National Archives. These range from records relating to welfare legislation to detailed documentation of particular institutions. These include the evolving responsibilities of the state for health and social care, the establishment of the National Health Service, and of documentation of institutions from medieval hospitals to Poor Law Unions.

The historic records of government offer rich insights into the diverse places and spaces associated with care and welfare. Plans, drawings, photographs, correspondence and many other documents testify to the ways in which space and place have shaped the provision of care and welfare in Britain and beyond. They also show how places and spaces have, in turn, been shaped by changing care and welfare practices, theories, and experiences.

What to expect

2026 Programme

09:15–09:45

Registration

09:45–10:00

Welcome

10:00–11:15

Institutional spaces of care

11:15 –11:30

Comfort break

11:30–12:30

Communities of care

12:30–13:15

Lunch

13:15–14:15

Document discussions

14:15–15:15

Itinerant care

15:15–15:30

Comfort break

15:30–16:45

Archives of care

16:45–17:00

Closing remarks

Papers include:

• Claudia Soares - Transformative environments? Children’s Care Settings Across the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries 
• Paul Carter - Employed to Care - Inclined to Mistreat: The New Poor Law Workhouse 
• Simon Mckeown - No Passengers: Invalid Carriages and the Contested Spaces of State Care 
• Rachel Meach - From ‘Intensive’ to Restorative: Rethinking the Intensive Care Unit as a Space of Care 
• Rachel Anderson - Care Beyond the Institution: Plague, Households and Community Spaces in Early Modern England 
• Benjamin Weddell - Wills as a Place of Collective Care: the Growth of Mutual Support in Maritime Communities 1750-1800 
• Muhammad Nabil - Paupers’ Graves to Resting Space: Archival Narratives of Posthumous Care and Social Welfare 
• Selin Nevrin Fidan - The Caretory of the Crimean War 
• Tanmay Kulshrestha - A Space of Her Own to Lose: Ayahs, Passports, and the Itinerant Architecture of Colonial Care, 1933–1942 
• Pablo Garcia Varela - After Liberation: Sanatoria, Convalescence and Spaces of Care for Concentration Camp Survivors 
• Jennifer Wallace - Emotion in the Archive: Taking Care of Postmortem Records and the Historian 
• Chris Day & Marco Humbel - The Machinery of Health? Computationally Visualising and Analysing British Health-Related Machinery of Government, c.1848-1948 
• Hannah Nagel - The Diaries of Robert Blackburn: Lived Experience Archives and Locations of Care 
• Ginny Dawe-Woodings - Nothing Wrong With Me but in Here All the Same: Capturing Whipps Cross Graffiti 

Past events

Talking Records 2025: Pollution in the archive

Date

4–5 December 2025

Location

Online and at The National Archives in Kew

Histories of pollution, contamination, and environmental damage can be found in a diverse range of records in the collections at The National Archives.

Across different times and places, from the very local to the global, the concept of pollution is intertwined with histories of land use and management, agricultural practices, urban space, natural disasters, health and safety, and public health and welfare. From the soil to water sources and the air, all aspects of the environment might be vulnerable to the effects of harmful substances, including pesticides, industrial waste, and radioactive material. Light and noise may also pollute, and both human and non-human creatures can be vulnerable when environments, habitats, and ecosystems are contaminated.

In records at The National Archives, pollution histories intersect with industrial histories (e.g. coal mining, industrial accidents, military activity) and urgent contemporary questions about energy sources and climate change. Pollution is an ever-evolving concept, and pre-modern records too can speak to us about changing scientific, social, and cultural understandings of contamination across the centuries – in histories of disease, for example.

Resources

Watch Watch the online event - Talking Records Symposium: Pollution in the Archive on YouTube

This video can also be viewed on YouTube with optional closed captions. Watch "Watch the online event - Talking Records Symposium: Pollution in the Archive" on YouTube.