Spaces of the Nervous System: Intersections between Anatomical Architecture and Neuroscience
Workshop at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS)
Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B 8000 Aarhus
Aarhus University, 15–16 June 2026
Contact:
Christine Beese:
Donna Briggs Bødtkjer:
Website: https://aias.au.dk/events/spaces-of-the-nervous-system
The twentieth century witnessed a profound transformation in medical knowledge production, marked by a shift from anatomy’s sensory engagement with the human body toward laboratory-based and technologically mediated approaches associated with neuroscience. While historians of medicine have examined this epistemic transition, significantly less attention has been paid to the architectural environments that both enabled and reflected these changing scientific priorities.
This workshop takes the first Anatomy Institute at Aarhus University, built in 1933, as a focal case for investigating the relationship between space, pedagogy, and disciplinary identity. The case offers a rare opportunity to examine how architectural ambition, institutional priorities, and emerging scientific paradigms intersected at a formative moment in modern medicine. More broadly, it allows us to ask how buildings function not merely as containers of knowledge but as active participants in shaping scholarly practice. Bringing this case into dialogue with international perspectives enables a comparative discussion of how anatomical spaces across Europe and North America were adapted, repurposed, or rendered obsolete during the twentieth century.
