16th EFACIS International Conference

                      

 

University of Lodz

University of Lodz Centre for Irish Studies

Polish Association for Irish Studies

EFACIS CONFERENCE

Transforming and Re-fashioning Ireland

27-30 July 2027

 

Ireland has repeatedly reinvented itself through periods of change and instability, and this capacity for transformation is what the conference sets out to examine. As Luke Gibbons observes, “transformations induced by contact with the new may activate a transgressive potential already latent in the old” (Transformations in Irish Culture). For centuries, and especially since the end of the nineteenth century, Irish literature, art, politics and society have positioned themselves at the forefront of innovation, generating forms of expression and producing social reforms and political concepts in close dialogue with avant-gardes, as well as with new philosophies and theories.

Eóin Flannery notes that the Irish have been “scrambling for a new set of codes by which to live their lives and with which to engage with the altered landscapes of the country” (Ireland and Ecocriticism. Literature, History and Environmental Justice). Hence, the conference organisers wish to address a broad range of issues related to transformation and change covering multidisciplinary areas of research not only in theatre, literature and art but also in such disciplines as cultural and media studies, social and political sciences, history, anthropology and economy. Moments of transition can be captured by investigating earlier periods and analysing contemporary legacies of long-term evolutions or by studying watershed moments in cultural and social history. Therefore, one of the conference’s central objectives is to reflect on Ireland in its diversity and to highlight how it has absorbed or resisted transnational influences, re-fashioning itself through successive stages of social, political and cultural evolutions.

Another vital perspective from which we would like to approach Ireland and its public history is through the lens of social commentary. Irish cultural practices have attentively witnessed political and economic changes, providing realistically grounded, artistically challenging, and boldly diagnostic commentaries on shifts marking important moments in Irish societies, North and South. Have Irish literature, culture and academia been handling these issues sufficiently and adequately?

The organisers invite papers which engage with multidisciplinary areas of textual and artistic production, political and social theory, historical and economic analysis, or anthropological, ecological and archaeological research.

 

Proposed strands:

• Political and social transformation: Irish writing and political and social crisis, the Troubles – post-conflict society, representing partition, demographic changes, mass migration and cultural diversity, diasporic writing, postcolonial and neocolonial texts, voicing secularisation, social exclusions and inequalities.

• New forms in literature, translation and new media: Irish writing and foreign experiment, writing as resilience, writing at a time of economic crisis/growth, schools of literary criticism, translation as cultural dialogue, new media and literary form, Web literature and the canon, writing for/with AI.

• Refashioning tradition, museums and the archive: transformations in folklore and myth, Irish language – alternative perspectives, Irish-language canon, representing rural Ireland, contesting national storytelling, museum narratives, archiving Irish cultures, curating practices.

• Mutations of care, equality and community: trauma as lived and formal experience, healing and post-traumatic transformations, queer, crip, migrant and other counter-hegemonic aesthetics, the pandemic and its aftermath, social justice, accessibility.

• Vicissitudes of funding, institutions and collaborations: economic transformations of Irish culture, global circulation and literary markets, grant schemes, sponsorship and artistic freedoms, institutional frameworks and cultural practices, artistic and literary collaborations, cross-arts practice.

• Evolutions in ecology, posthumanism and travel: artistic change and climate change, climate trauma, environmental writing/art, environmental justice in Irish literature and culture, from anthropocentrism to more-than-human subjects, representing the posthuman, travel writing old and new – travel blogs.

The organisers welcome proposals for panels, roundtable discussions, and individual papers that address the themes outlined above.

 

Keynote Speakers:

• Professor Fionna Barber (Manchester School of Art)

• Professor Margaret Kelleher (University College Dublin)

• Professor Derval Tubridy (Goldsmith University of London)

 

Invited Artists:

• Jessica Traynor

• Radvan Markus

 

Organising Committee:

Joanna Kruczkowska, Michał Lachman, Katarzyna Ojrzyńska, Wit Pietrzak

 

Fee:

Regular: 200 euro

Reduced fee: 170 euro

All participants need to be paid-up members of EFACIS.

 

PhD grants:

Information on Werner Huber grants for EFACIS PhD students may be found at: https://www.efacis.eu/content/werner-huber-grants.
Please contact efaciscoord@efacis.eu if you have further questions.

 

Abstract submission:

Please send abstracts for 20-minute presentations or panels / roundtables (3 speakers) to ulcis@uni.lodz.pl.

Paper proposals should be no more than 250 words, and panel proposals no more than 500 words.

Deadline for submissions: 10 January 2027

 

VENUE: University of Lodz, Faculty of Philology – the conference is run on-site.

 

MORE INFORMATION:

For information about the conference and other organisational matters, please visit the conference website: www.ulcis.uni.lodz.pl

Questions about the conference can be emailed to ulcis@uni.lodz.pl.