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ESSE bursaries and support schemes 2025

It is my pleasure to inform you that the announcements for various ESSE research support schemes for 2025 are now posted at the ESSE website https://essenglish.org.

Here is the list of various support schemes that ESSE offers, all posted at https://essenglish.org/research-and-support/:  

ESSE Doctoral Symposium, for PhD students working on their dissertations: https://essenglish.org/doctoral-symposium/ . The deadline for application is 15 January 2025. 

There is also a support scheme for the national associations:

Conference plenary speaker support https://essenglish.org/conference-plenary-speaker-support/, to invite plenary speakers to their national associations’ conferences,

Additionally, and importantly, there is also an announcement for the positions of ESSE Treasurer and ESSE Secretary. The deadline for applications is 30 April 2025. More details how to apply at https://essenglish.org/esse-announcements/.

Best regards,

Biljana

Prof. Biljana Mišić Ilić

ESSE Secretary

European Society for the Study of English (ESSE)
esse.secretary@outlook.com

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CFP:

NAES 2025: “Attending to the Islands: Archipelagic Perspectives on Anglophonia”

Nordic Association for English Studies Triennial ConferenceÅbo / Turku Finland, 8–10 May 2025

In an ever bustling, ever hurrying world, the concept of attention has become increasingly important. As Jonathan Crary observed in Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture, the “contemporary experience […] requires that we effectively cancel out or exclude from consciousness much of our immediate environment”.[1] At the same time, contemporary society has been significantly impacted by seemingly conflicting forces and paradoxical processes of attention and distraction in various institutional, cultural, and technological contexts. The focus of this conference will be on any of the many ways in which the field of English Studies – and disciplinary perspectives from literature, culture, and history to linguistics and education – addresses and is shaped by various aspects of attention. These range from tensions between mediated experience and phenomenal perception to how political and cultural narratives direct our attention to some aspects of society while creating blind spots elsewhere. In addition to abstracts exploring this theme, the NAES are glad to invite panel suggestions on administrative issues as well as proposals for papers on other areas of interest related to Nordic English Studies.

Themes for discussion include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Attending to the Islands: Archipelagic Perspectives on English Studies
  • Surveillance, control, and the politics of attention
  • Technology and the media: forms of attention and inattention
  • Borders, surveys, and mappings
  • Nordic English Studies and attention in education
  • Local, global, and transnational attention – place, mobility, and migration
  • Hotspots and blind spots: geography and the environment
  • Attention, crisis, and catastrophe: personal and social perspectives
  • Attention and the phenomenology of perception
  • The aesthetics and poetics of attention in literature and the arts; authorship, narrative, perspective
  • Generational and societal changes in attention
  • Religion, politics, and social groups
  • Ageing and attention
  • Attending to language: linguistics, translation, and the multilingual society
  • Diachronic and/or synchronic approaches and methods

Proposals for individual 20-minute presentations or panels/roundtables (3 speakers) should be sent by email to info-naes@abo.fi by 16 December 2024.

Proposals should include: name(s), institutional affiliation(s), paper title(s), a 250-word abstract  and a brief biographical note of up to 50 words for each participant. (Three speaker panels may allow 200 words for the overall proposal, 200 words for each speaker’s abstract, and 50 words for each individual biography.) Panel/roundtable proposals should also identify the contact person for the entire session. Prospective speakers will be notified of a decision by 30 January 2025. At the time of the conference, accepted speakers will have 20 minutes at their disposal (with an extra 10 minutes set aside for discussion), and should be fully paid-up members of the NAES.

Hosted by Åbo Akademi University and the University of Turku, the conference is organized in collaboration with the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS) whose concurrent annual conference in Åbo / Turku is titled “Attending to Ireland”.

Conference Web page: https://blogs2.abo.fi/naes-efacis2025/ 

Åbo / Turku (the former capital of Finland) is usually very pleasant at the beginning of May. And as the city is situated on the edge of the Finnish archipelago, we envisage that the conference programme will include an optional boat trip through the islands, a visit to Turku Castle, poetry readings, a musical entertainment, and more …

–  KEYNOTE SPEAKERS –

Fiona Farr

Lorna Hutson

Christopher Morash

Andrew Newby

Invited Poet: Desmond Egan

[1] Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (The MIT Press, 1999), p. 1.

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CFP:

EFACIS 2025: “Attending to Ireland”

European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies ConferenceÅbo / Turku, Finland, 8–11 May 2025

In an ever bustling, ever hurrying world, the concept of “attention” has become increasingly important. As Jonathan Crary observed in Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture, the “contemporary experience […] requires that we effectively cancel out or exclude from consciousness much of our immediate environment”.[1] At the same time, the contemporary society, in Ireland and elsewhere, has been shaped by seemingly conflicting forces and paradoxical processes of attention and distraction in various institutional, cultural, and technological contexts. The focus of this conference will be on any of the many ways in which the field of Irish Studies – and disciplinary perspectives from literature, culture, and history to linguistics and education – addresses and is shaped by various aspects of attention. These range from tensions between mediated experience and phenomenal perception to how political and cultural narratives direct our attention to some aspects of society while creating blind spots elsewhere.

Themes for discussion include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Attending to Ireland as/and island(s): culture, geography, and the state
  • Surveillance, control, and the politics of attention
  • Technology and the media: forms of attention and inattention
  • Borders, surveys, and mappings and the 100th anniversary of The Irish Boundary Commission
  • Irish Studies and attention in education
  • Local, global, and transnational attention – place, mobility, and migration
  • Hotspots and blind spots: geography and the environment
  • Attention, crisis, and catastrophe: personal and social perspectives
  • Attention and the phenomenology of perception
  • The aesthetics and poetics of attention in literature and the arts; authorship, narrative, perspective
  • Generational and societal changes in attention
  • Religion, politics, and social groups
  • Ageing and attention in Ireland
  • Attending to language: linguistics, translation, and the multilingual society
  • Diachronic and/or synchronic approaches and methods

Proposals for individual 20-minute presentations or panels/roundtables (3 speakers) should be sent by email to info-efacis@abo.fi by 16 December 2024.

Proposals should include: name(s), institutional affiliation(s), paper title(s), a 250-word abstract  and a brief biographical note of up to 50 words for each participant. (Three speaker panels may allow 200 words for the overall proposal, 200 words for each speaker’s abstract, and 50 words for each individual biography.) Panel/roundtable proposals should also identify the contact person for the entire session. Speakers should be fully paid-up members of EFACIS.

The organisers accept proposals and papers in either the Irish or English language./ Cuirtear fáilte roimh pháipéir i nGaeilge nó i mBéarla.

Hosted by Åbo Akademi University and the University of Turku, the conference is organized in collaboration with the Nordic Association for English Studies (NAES) whose concurrent annual conference in Åbo / Turku is titled “Attending to the Islands: Archipelagic Perspectives on Anglophonia”.

Conference Web page: https://blogs2.abo.fi/naes-efacis2025/

Åbo / Turku (the former capital of Finland) is usually very pleasant at the beginning of May. And as the city is situated on the edge of the Finnish archipelago, we envisage that the conference programme will include an optional boat trip through the islands, a visit to Turku Castle, poetry readings, a musical entertainment, and more …

– KEYNOTE SPEAKERS –

Fiona Farr

Christopher Morash

Lorna Hutson

Andrew Newby

Invited Poet: Desmond Egan

Information on Werner Huber grants for EFACIS PhD students may be found at: https://www.efacis.eu/content/werner-huber-grants.

[1] Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (The MIT Press, 1999), p. 1.

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Lausanne ESSE summary

Our mother organisation, the ESSE, convened in Lausanne in August, for a board meeting and a conference. From NORSES, Knut Øystein Høvik and Stephanie Hazel Vold both gave papers in the seminar Critical Issues in English Language Teacher Education (which was the session with most participants). Høvik also chaired Charley Armstrong’s parallell lecture (the level below keynote) entitled The Wanderings of the Modern Myths: Exemplarity, Adaptation, and Spatiality.

As leader of NORSES, Høvik also serves on the ESSE board, which supplied the following list of their most important decicions this year:

1.
The Board of ESSE elected a new President, Professor Lieven Buysee from Belgium for a three-year period. His term of office will begin on 1st January 2025 when he will replace the current president, Professor Andreas H. Jucker. The Board expressed their gratitude to the current president for his services to ESSE during two terms of office from 2019 to 2024.
2.
The Board of ESSE appointed a nominations committee for the election of the ESSE Treasurer and the ESSE Secretary. The call for applications will be published on the ESSE website in October 2024. The deadline for the submission of applications is 30th April 2025. The term of office for both posts will begin on 1st January 2026.
3.
The Board of ESSE agreed to discontinue the reduction of annual fees from €9.00 to €7.00. In 2025, the fees return to €9.00.
4.
The Board of ESSE strongly reaffirmed its commitment to promote research and to support activities aimed to help both young and established researchers. The Board decided to:
• continue with the Bursaries and appointed a Bursary committee for 2025. The Board also decided to continue with bursaries for Gender Studies within English studies for 2025.
• continue with the Book and Resources grants.
• continue with the Doctoral Symposium in both conference and non-conference years and, for the non-conference year 2025, to offer funding to help eligible doctoral students in need of support to participate in the Doctoral Symposium that will be held together with the Board Meeting in Malta.
• continue with a special research support scheme for national associations with tight resources to invite plenary speakers from other national associations to their own national conferences and to cover their travel expenses.
• discontinue the Collaborative Project Workshop Scheme.
5.
The Board of ESSE delegated four members to represent ESSE in the Academic Programme Committee for the ESSE-18 conference in 2026 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, together with the APC members from the host association.
6.
The Board of ESSE accepted the bid of Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, as the venue of the ESSE–19 conference in 2028.
7.
The Board of ESSE unanimously nominated a new co-editor of the European Journal of English Studies. This is Dr. Frederik Van Dam from Radboud University, Nijmegen, who is going to replace the current co-editor, Professor Greta Olson, as of 1 January 2025. The Board of ESSE expressed their gratitude to Prof. Greta Olson for her long
and dedicated service to EJES.
8.
The Board of ESSE agreed to adhere to the rule established back at the Board meeting in 2019 to have only one date for membership updates per calendar year. Fees will be collected according to the membership lists sent to the ESSE Treasurer by 15th November of the current year. Members whose names are included in these lists will be able to apply for ESSE privileges the following year, such as ESSE Bursaries, ESSE Book grants, ESSE Book awards, conference fee waivers and the Collaborative Project Workshop Schemes. The only exception continues to be the ESSE Doctoral Symposium, for which different rules apply as specified in the Symposium announcement.

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Erasmus+ Teacher Academy Event

Erasmus+ Teacher Academy Event: Meta-Scientific Literacies in the (Mis-)Information Age (SciLMi)

Erasmus+ project Meta-Scientific Literacies in the (Mis-)Information Age (SciLMi) seeks to address the threat of science-related misinformation by equipping educators with the competences needed to foster meta-scientific literacies in secondary-school students. The project develops teacher training programs and learning modules focusing on critical thinking, digital media literacy, and inclusive classroom practices. Through its collaborative pan-European Hub, SciLMi aspires to create a lasting impact on education systems.

The SciLMi Hub Kick-Off will take place digitally on 27 June 2024. 

The online event provides an opportunity to (re)connect with other educators, explore synergies with other projects, and showcase how SciLMi Learning Modules promote Meta-Scientific Literacies in various subjects, including language subjects, in line with the PISA 2025 Framework. In 2025 and 2026, we will invite over 100 SciLMi Hub Members to training courses and train-the-trainer events in Santiago de Compostela, Munich, Nicosia, Palaio Faliro and Budapest.

You can access the event program details here. 

Register here to join the SciLMi Hub, gain access to the online platform, and benefit from rewarding opportunities:

We would greatly appreciate it if you could help us promote the event within your network. Kindly extend this invitation to any of your colleagues who may be interested in attending the event.

Would you be interested in showcasing your own project or initiative to increase its reach, impact and sustainability? We offer free and user-friendly 2D and 3D virtual booths to present videos, images, or pdf posters to the event participants, and engage with them on the SciLMi focus areas. These booths will be accessible to SciLMi Hub members for networking purposes for at least twelve months. Additional guidance regarding the arrangement of your booth will be given shortly after you register. It mainly involves uploading the files, they will be arranged automatically in the booth.

If you have any questions or require further information, please contact scilmi@edunet.eu

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ASANOR conference

In 2025, Norway will observe the bicentennial commemoration of the first planned direct emigration from Norway to the Americas. In the wake of this first party of emigrants, nearly one million emigrants left Norway for various destinations, 800,000-900,000 to the United States alone. As migration has increasingly also taken on the character of re-migration and work migration, with communities and identities assuming diasporic and transnational markers, processes and manifestations of the transcultural do their work in sending as well as host countries. The development moreover reminds us that Norwegians and other emigrants to the Americas were also once immigrants. In the lead-up to the bicentennial commemoration of Norwegian emigration in 2025 the theme of the 2024 American Studies Association of Norway (ASANOR) biannual conference will therefore focus on the multifaceted dimensions of migration and how migration currents and mentalities for centuries have affected both North America and sending countries in entangled fashions.

We welcome contributions from all disciplines that examine ties and networks created by emigration and expatriation in addition to immigrants’ lives. We further invite papers that explore how emigrants, expatriates, and travelers in America have reflected upon their lives and experiences in receiving societies in the Americas and how these expressions circulated among populations in the sending societies Specifically, entanglements between expatriate communities and their communities of origin, and how these shaped and were shaped by transatlantic public spheres that differed over time and according to context and power—will be of particular interest. Besides, the racialization of ethnic minorities in constructed hierarchies based on whiteness as well as immigrants’ exchanges with other ethnicities and indigenous peoples play into these experiences as they were expressed both in the USA and in the sending countries.

Themes to be addressed at the conference include but are not limited to:

– immigration/emigration epistemologies

– the creation of utopian communities

– travel writing

– life writing

– implications/effects of settler colonialism

– religious dimensions of emigration/immigration

– border studies

– immigrant regions/regionalisms

– translocal, transnational, and transcultural exchanges

– interethnic/-cultural exchanges

– gender studies

– aesthetic representations of the transcultural and transnational

The 2024 ASANOR Conference will be hosted by the Norwegian Emigrant Museum, Ottestad and Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Hamar from October 3rd to October 5th, 2024. We invite contributions from a wide range of fields including but not limited to literature, history, political science, linguistics, religion, media, the arts, and cultural studies that explore the theme of migration, connections, and the creation of transcultural spheres.

To apply, please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word biography to asanor2024@gmail.com by June 1, 2024.

More here: 2024 Conference – American Studies Association of Norway (asanor.org)

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Course

PhD course in Bergen

We’d like to announce a 5-day PhD course, “Multimodal Literacy and Aesthetic Engagement” (5 ECTS), which will be offered at The Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), Bergen campus, on 16-20 September 2024. The course will be offered in hybrid form and is free (although we cannot provide accommodation or travel bursaries).

We invite all PhD candidates in literature and / or cultural studies or a related field (Media Studies, Literacy, English Education) to apply via by 15 June 2024. Applications from students who have received an MA and hope to apply for a PhD will also be considered.

To apply, and for more information, please visit the course website: https://www.hvl.no/en/studies-at-hvl/study-programmes/courses/2024/phd915/

Anyone in need of more information may email the organizers at jhc@hvl.no or zva@hvl.no.

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CFP

Conference on the Declaration of Independence

Dear colleagues,

We are planning to mark the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 with a special issue of the journal Skriftkultur. In preparation for that, we are organising a one-day conference in Volda on Wednesday 22 October this autumn on the theme of Constituting the State in Writing. Papers can either discuss the Declaration itself or documents from other times and places that have a similar status and/or role. We are hoping to attract contributions on a range of topics, but one common element must be that every paper should discuss the Declaration or its analogues as a written document in particular. If you think this might be of interest to you, please see the Call for Papers attached and write to me if you have any questions. Please also forward this message to anyone you think might be interested from other academic subjects.

Best,

Tim Saunders

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Vacancies

Temporary position at Stavanger

A temporary position as assistant professor of ELT methodology is available at UiS:

Universitetslektor i engelskdidaktikk, vikariat (260539) | Universitetet i Stavanger (jobbnorge.no) – deadline 24th April.

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PhD position in Bergen

The Department of Foreign Languages invites applications for a PhD position commencing from August 1st 2024, or by agreement. The position is for a fixed-term period of four years. The call is open for projects within the scope of The Literature and Religion research group or the Research group for Aesthetic and Cultural Studies.

The Department of Foreign Languages spans nine different languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish language and Latin-American Studies. Teaching and research are conducted in the disciplines of language/linguistics, literature, cultural studies and didactics (http://www.uib.no/en/fremmedsprak). The Department has around 60 permanent academic staff members, along with approximately 20 PhD and postdoctoral fellows, and eleven administrative members of staff.

See: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/259774/phd-position-at-the-department-of-foreign-languages