Second workshop 28 April 2017

The second workshop will take place on Friday 28 April 2017 at the University of Glasgow.

We are pleased to welcome back as one of our plenary speakers Dr Helena Miguélez-Carballeira
, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Bangor.  Our second plenary speaker is Dr Mari Jose Olaziregi, Senior Lecturer in Basque Studies, Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country.

The draft programme is here: Contested Identities Draft Programme 28 April 2017.

For further information please contact the organiser, Professor Willy Maley.

Programme for workshop on 15 April 2016

Click here to download the provisional programme: Draft schedule 15 April

About our guest speakers (2)

We are very pleased to be welcoming Dr Josep-Anton Fernàndez to our workshop on 15 April. He will be speaking on ‘Loss, Mourning, and the Construction of Catalan Identity’.

Josep-Anton holds a Ph.D in Modern Languages ​​from the University of Cambridge, and a degree in Catalan Language and Literature from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is currently the Head of the Language and Universities Department at the Institut Ramon Llull, the public body responsible for the international promotion of Catalan language and culture. Between 2007 and 2015 he was associate professor of Catalan Studies in the Arts and Humanities Department at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), where he was responsible for modules in contemporary Catalan literature, cultural studies, and gender and sexuality within the undergraduate programme in Catalan Language and Literature. Also at the UOC he was academic director of the MA in Catalan Studies, where he convened subjects on culture and subjectivity, modern Catalan narrative, and research design. Until 2006 he was Senior Lecturer in Catalan at Queen Mary, University of London, where he founded and directed the Centre for Catalan Studies.

He is a specialist in 20th-century Catalan literature and culture, and in gender and sexuality studies. He is particularly interested in the process of construction of subjectivities, and in how theoretical discourses such as psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory help us account for these processes and explore them in cultural production. He is the author of El malestar en la cultura catalana: La cultura de la normalització 1976-1999 (2008) [Catalan culture and its discontents: The culture of normalisation 1976-1999] and Another Country: Sexuality and National Identity in Catalan Gay Fiction (2000); he is editor of El gai saber: Introducció als estudis gais i lèsbics (2000) [Introduction to lesbian and gay studies] and co-editor (with Adrià Chavarria) of Calçasses, gallines i maricons: Homes contra la masculinitat hegemònica (2004) [Men against hegemonic masculinity]. He has published numerous essays on contemporary literature and culture, film, and television. His most recent funded research project was “Functions of the past in contemporary Catalan culture: Institutionalisation, representations, identity “. He is a member of the Board of the Plataforma per la Llengua, the main NGO in the field of language rights in Catalonia.

About our guest speakers (1)

We are pleased to announce that Dr Helena Miguélez Carballeira (Bangor University) will be giving a paper at the first workshop on 15 April.  The title of her contribution is ‘Thinking Spain in postcolonial terms: culture, conflict, democracy’.

Helena specialises in Iberian cultural histories and Translation Studies, with particular interests in postcolonial and feminist approaches to national cultures in Spain and Galician cultural history. She is currently the holder of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for the project ‘Postcolonial Spain: History, Political Cultures and Material Realities’.

Invitation to participate

The ‘Contested Identities’ project aims to bring together researchers based in Scotland who work on Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia.  Contributions are welcome from any area of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. We are also keen to involve filmmakers, curators, writers, journalists, policy-makers (etc.), and one of our collaborators is Beyond Borders Scotland, a not-for-profit organisation based in Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders.

Areas the network might address include:

Identity – belonging – affect – sameness and difference – images and narratives of the nation – performance – transnational relationships – globalisation – traditional and new media – cultural production – the ‘small nation’ – cultural diplomacy – culture and politics – independence movements – history and memory – language.

Click here for more information.

The first (full day) workshop for the project will take place on Friday 15 April at the University of Glasgow.

You are invited to submit an expression of interest in attending the workshop, which is free and lunch is provided.  There is also a travel fund to support attendance for those coming from Scottish locations other than Glasgow, and two bursaries for postgraduate students.

The workshop will be structured around brief presentations by participants on their proposed contribution, and some longer papers from invited speakers.  There will also be a planning session to discuss how the network goes forward and arrangements for publications.

Expressions of interest: deadline 25 February 2016

Expressions of interest should take the form of a paragraph outlining your research interests and highlighting any relevant publications, and a brief proposal for the contribution you would wish to make to any volume of papers (there is no need for this to be a fully-developed ‘abstract’, as such, at this stage).  We are most certainly open to contributions from practitioners as well as academics (e.g. reflections on your practice in the light of the themes of the network).

Please email your proposal by 5pm on 25 February to kathryn.crameri@glasgow.ac.uk, including any institutional affiliation and your contact details.  The decision regarding invitations to participate in the workshop will be based on the fit of the different proposals with the desire to stimulate innovative dialogues between members of the network.

Postgraduate students wishing to apply for a bursary should also include a letter of support from their supervisor that states the value of participation in the network for their research or professional development.