What Remains? Ireland, Ruins, Archives and Afterlives
The 8th International Postgraduate Conference in Irish Studies, Prague
17-18 September 2027
Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University
Contact: postgradprague@gmail.com
The International Postgraduate Conference in Irish Studies, hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University in Prague, invites paper proposals on the topic of “What Remains? Ireland, Ruins, Archives and Afterlives”. The biannual conference aims to offer space for productive discussion between graduate students working in Irish Studies, including those whose background extends beyond the literary context.
A ruin marks an ending, but it also leaves something behind. In Ireland, ruins do not refer to a finished past. Across Irish history, the ruined buildings, abandoned landscapes, fragmented archives, and inherited memories have kept the past active within the present. They withhold traces of war, dispossession, famine, migration, violence, loss, and political change along with language, communities, and cultural practices. What remains is not just the material but the past that has survived in archives, literature, placenames, photographs, performances, and cultural memory.
This conference asks what it means for something to remain. How do places transmit memory? What happens when archives are incomplete or inaccessible? How do texts, performances, institutions, and communities acquire afterlives? And how are the remnants of the past recovered, reinterpreted, reused, or resisted by later generations?
Conceiving of the question “what remains” in its broadest sense, the conference welcomes literary, historical, cultural, linguistic, political, environmental, and archival approaches. We are particularly interested in opening the space to discuss how different forms of survival, loss, preservation, and transformation complicate the relationship between Ireland’s past and present. We welcome submissions from across Irish Studies that speak to the broader conference theme. Interdisciplinary, comparative, and transnational approaches are particularly encouraged. We are particularly interested in the following areas:
- Ruins and built heritage
- Archives and missing records
- Cultural memory and forgetting
- Famine landscapes
- Colonial and postcolonial afterlives
- Revolution, Partition and the Troubles
- Institutional histories
- Irish language and placenames
- Folklore and storytelling
- Oceans and maritime memory
- Environmental change and activism
- Migration and diaspora
- Adaptation and literary afterlives
- Archives and afterlives in performance
- Material and visual culture
- Recovered and marginalised histories
- Digital heritage
- Repair, reuse and future-making
Papers should be related to the topic of participants’ PhD research and presented in English. Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted to the organisers at postgradprague@gmail.com by 31 January 2027. These must include the title of the paper, a bio of 50-100 words, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation, as well as any special AV requirements for the presentation. The conference is planned as an in-person event.
In order to provide detailed feedback for each paper, the conference format will consist of 10-minute paper summaries followed by responses from nominated participants. They will provide feedback on the complete paper as submitted in advance, and their response will be followed by a general discussion. Participants should expect to be appointed as respondents to other papers. Complete papers are to be in the region of 3,000 words. The submission date for complete papers is 15 June 2027.
There will be no registration fee for the conference.
Keynote event: The conference will feature a Panel Session on Early Career Research and Career Building with Dr Ellen Howley (Dublin City University) and Prof. Ondřej Pilný (Charles University). Questions and areas of discussion for the Panel Session may be submitted by participants to postgradprague@gmail.com by 15 June 2027.
The conference takes place under the aegis of the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS) and is supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland.
All participants in the conference must be EFACIS members. To become an EFACIS member, please contact the EFACIS coordinator at efaciscoord@efacis.eu.
Two Werner Huber Grants to help cover travel and accommodation expenses will be available via EFACIS. More information: https://irishpostgradprague.ff.cuni.cz/werner-huber-grants/.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further inquiries.
Conference Committee:
Andrea Zvoníčková, Iqra Nasim, Klára Witzany Hutková, Nathalie Lamprecht, Ondřej Pilný