Events by this organizer

This inclusive interdisciplinary conference explores dying and death and the ways culture impacts care for the dying, the overall experience of dying and ways the dead are remembered. Our conversations seek a broad array of perspectives that explore, analyse, and/or interpret the myriad interrelations and interactions that exist between death and culture. Culture not only presents and portrays ideas about “a good death” and norms that seek to achieve it, it also operates as both a vehicle and medium through which meaning about death is communicated and understood. Sadly, too, culture sometimes facilitates death through violence.

A key emphasis in this year’s conference will be an exploration of the connections between health care systems, caregivers, and matters of public policy that serve those at the end-of-life. The conference welcomes all those who endeavour to address questions such as these, along with people engaged in analysing, re-imagining and/or improving end of life experience with a view to forming an innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further research and collaboration. Augmenting our rich conversations, our ethos aspires to create relationships and on-going dialogues that re-envision patient-centred care.

Read more and submit your abstract here.

Spirituality recognises that there is more to reality than just the material world. The intuition that our lives have meaning and are part of something bigger is a powerful motivator for us to cultivate our spiritual side. The mystical experiences and beliefs that arise from this engagement can stimulate our imagination in unexpected ways. Feelings of transcendence and awe have inspired creative people, artists, writers and composers throughout the ages, and continue to influence cultures around the world. Spirituality has certainly not gone away in a hyper-connected age, but finds new modes of expression and practice. After the success of the first two Spirituality & … Culture conferences, we have pleasure in inviting you to the third. It is part of an exciting new series of inclusive interdisciplinary projects that focus on the significance of spirituality to human living, thinking and feeling in today’s world. This event will explore the interactions between spirituality, culture and social phenomena – with a view to forming an innovative interdisciplinary publication to encourage further collaboration and discussion. We hope that you can join us in these conversations.

Read more and submit your abstract here.

As a constant and chilling presence in individual lives and the popular imagination, the supernatural, as a cultural phenomenon, is prone to repeated revivals and resurrections. But what does the current preoccupation with the supernatural say about contemporary societies, particularly in relation to issues of gender, sexuality and identity, socio-political anxieties, historical and personal trauma? The Supernatural Connections conference seeks to provide a platform for exploring these questions from inclusive interdisciplinary perspectives by opening up new avenues of research and new conversations about the supernatural through papers, performances and panels focusing on any aspect of this complex, multifaceted topic with a view to forming an innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further research and collaboration.. The conference organisers are particularly interested in incorporating papers/ presentations from a diverse range of disciplines, including, but not limited to, literary and cultural studies, film studies, theology, psychology, the social and natural sciences, history, philosophy, sociology, education and anthropology. We also enthusiastically welcome submissions from practitioners, artists, writers, curators and others.

Read more and submit your abstract here.

Growing awareness and appreciation of the rich horror traditions of other countries around the world, including Japan, Korean, India, Brazil and Ecuador, has highlighted the importance of considering horror in a global context. Accordingly, the Global Horror: Local Perspectives Project provides a platform for exploring the ways in which horror motifs and themes are expressed through the ‘local perspectives’ that inform the creative practices and daily life of particular nations and cultures.

It is not the intent of the Project to exclude Anglo-European and American perspectives from the conversation of global horror but rather to centre other horror traditions which have frequently been de-centred or completely overlooked in the past. The scope of the Project therefore includes work that explores marginalised local perspectives within Anglo-European and American horror, and work that examines Anglo-European and American horror from a global perspective with a view to forming an innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further research and collaboration.

Read more and submit your abstract here.

Key questions for discussion include: What are the purposes and consequences of declaring someone a bad mother? How have the standards for being a bad mother changed over time? To what extent is the bad mother label a product of economic and racial privilege? What do stories of real and fictional bad mothers reveal about broader socio-cultural preoccupations? Are bad mothers ever justified in their behaviour, and can they be redeemed? Is there an obligation to act in relation to bad mothers?

Read more and submit your abstract here.

Every day we move through space that has been constructed or delineated somehow to be significant. We recognise and—consciously or unconsciously—react to this significance on a daily or hourly basis, and we draw from a cultural well of knowledge in order to do so.

The exciting and productive discussions at our previous meeting explored a number of key areas: shifting meanings of neighbourhoods through time | mobility between economic and political spaces | the effect of place on emotion and perception | procession and its manipulation of meaning in space | political control of space as a function of controlling protests | fiction and its creation of space | mapping and the deployment of power |
Building on the success of these and other conversations, and the entirety of last year’s conference, we aim to continue to examine the way space is bounded or expanded to create place.

Read more and submit your abstract here.

Humankind has long been fascinated with accounts of crimes and criminals. The public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for gore, misery and retribution is undiminished today. True crime regularly tops poll as one of the most popular literary genres and it often focuses on the worst of humanity: murderers, necrophiles, cannibals, and the like. Against this backdrop, our True Crime conference will explore the popularity of true crime, past and present, considering how these stories expose deeper societal issues and tensions. We will examine the links between real crimes and crime fiction, how one feeds into the other with sometimes horrifying consequences; and examine the moral landscape of true crime, including its potential to re-traumatise survivors, victims’ families and witnesses.

Read more and submit your abstract here.