“Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, ‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.’ Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
“the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.” – G. K. Chesterton
The place of home in our society and culture deserves critical examination. On the one hand our culture is replete with idealised, and perhaps clichéd, notions of home, on the other—particularly in an age of increasing globalism, competition, and crisis—it can often appear that homes and homelife are considered last on the list of priorities, if they are considered at all.
The disruptions caused by COVID and the new ways people were expected to use their homes has afforded us with a convenient excuse to open a discussion on home. This being the case, The Dawson Society is pleased to announce the theme of our second major conference, “HOME: Family. Place. Economics.” In doing so we are deliberately cultivating a broad approach to the idea of home from the architecture of the dwellings that shelter us, to the social structures and economies that support (or disrupt) homelife, from home as a family unit, to home as a country and place.
The conference will be held from 10-12 July, 2025 in Perth, Western Australia
Papers on the following topics and others are welcome:
- Home economics. Working in/from home.
- Faith and/in the home.
- Place: theories and practices of place. Mobility, transport, and connectedness to place.
- Christianity, pilgrimage, and the heavenly homeland.
- Marriage, family life; homemaking, home cooking.
- Being at home in one’s body: gender, gender roles, and embodied persons.
- Care for our common home: Environment and home.
- The front porch; home within a community of homes.
- The city, and the suburb; Architecture and city planning.
- The homestead. Agrarianism/back to the land movement.
- Homelessness, and loneliness.
- Colonial and post-colonial conceptions of homeland.
- Indigenous/non-European conceptions of home.
- Nationality and home.
- Old and new worlds; Migration and home.
- Capitalism and home.
- Literary and artistic representations of the home.
- Illness, old age, and the home as a place of care.
- Mother tongue/s – the language of the home.
Criteria and Deadlines for Papers
We invite submissions from persons interested in critically addressing any theme related to “home”. Speakers should identify understandings and ideals of home and societal forces that shape home. All papers should, at some level, assess how their approach to their chosen topic might interact with the Christian claim.
Total time allocation for each paper will be 30 minutes which must include time for audience questions and responses. Proceedings will be recorded and posted on the internet, and published in 2025/6.
Abstract proposals of between 100-300 words should be sent to Dr Tom Gourlay, The Dawson Society for Philosophy & Culture Inc. via email: by 31 March 2025 at the latest.
Keynote Speakers:
Dr Marc Barnes holds a PhD in Theology from St. Mary’s University Twickenham. He is a father of three, the editor of New Polity magazine, and the president of The Harmonium Project, a nonprofit dedicated to urban revitalization and transformation in Steubenville, Ohio.
Mrs Anna Krohn OAM is the Executive Director of the Thomas More Centre an Australian movement founded to form people in the principles of the common good and personal virtue and by enabling them to build supportive and intentional communities to that end.
Emeritus Professor John Kinder OSI FAHA is Emeritus Professor of Italian Studies. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a Corresponding Fellow of the Accademia della Crusca, and a Grand Ufficiale of the Order of the Star of Italy.
