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.

“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