BSECS Postgraduate and Early-Career Researcher Conference
22nd – 23rd August 2024
Uppsala University, Sweden
Communication and Exchange
We invite proposals for papers for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ Postgraduate and Early-Career Researcher Conference 2024, held at Uppsala University in association with the Department of Art History and the Swedish Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
Eighteenth-century Sweden was intimately involved with global exchanges: exports of iron and the imports of global goods all connected Sweden with new cultural tastes, practices and knowledge. Uppsala itself was a place many visited throughout the eighteenth century, particularly as students and colleagues of eminent Swedish Enlightenment figures such as Johan Ihre, Anders Celsius and Carl von Linne; making it a centre for the communication of ideas on topics as diverse as the arts, music, biology, physics and astronomy. However, during this period Sweden was also involved in the exchange of enslaved people, playing a role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, acquiring the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy, and establishing the Swedish West India Company during the 1780s. Indeed, many exchanges and communications centred around Saint-Barthélemy as a duty-free port for slave ships flying under the flags of many nationalities, and those exports of iron were also used in the production of slave chains.
Just as various exchanges and communications were so central to eighteenth-century Sweden, so they are in our collaboration with Uppsala. Reflecting this, the conference theme for 2024 revolves around the theme of ‘Communication and Exchange’.
We particularly invite papers from postgraduate and early-career researchers that address our theme, but proposals relating to any aspect of the long eighteenth century, with any geographical focus, are welcome.
We invite proposals for individual papers, full panels of three papers, roundtable sessions, workshops or other innovative formats. Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to):
- Materiality
- Local, National and Global
- Colonialism and Slavery
- Politics and Propaganda
- Self-Fashioning
- Distant Communications
- Travel Literature
- Metropole and Peripheries
- Music and Performance
All submissions should be sent to postgrad@bsecs.org.uk for consideration. For individual papers, please send abstracts of 250 words and a short biography. For fully formed panels, (3-4 speakers), roundtables or workshops please send abstracts of 250 words for each paper along with brief details of the proposed theme, biographies of speakers, and proposed chair. CFP opens 1st February 2024 and closes 31st March 2024. We aim to get back to all speakers by mid-April with decisions and have the programme finalised by mid-May.
Conference Organisers:
Rachel Bynoth, Bath Spa University
Katie Noble, University of Oxford
Emma Pearce, University of Edinburgh
Hardeep Dhindsa, King’s College London
Annika Windahl Pontén, Uppsala University