The BCLA turns fifty in 2025! To celebrate this important milestone, we have developed a series of events organised by colleagues at the BCLA, which will take place in 2025 and 2026. We wanted to see a wide spread of themes and coverage, and to make these events inclusive and cost-free, they are largely taking place online. Below you can find the calendar of events that have taken place, but watch this space, as more events are likely to be added in due course!
13 June 2025: Ten Versions of Kafka (Oxford), led by Ian Ellison in conversation with author Maïa Hruska. Hruska’s prize-winning book explores how ‘Kafka became Kafka’ through the comparative investigation of ten different translations from the mid-1920s. An AHRC-funded Kafka’s Transformative Communities project event, in collaboration with Oxford Comparative Critical Translation (OCCT) and the BCLA. Further details can be accessed here.
27 June 2025: Comparative Literature & Environmental Humanities Colloquium (London), led by Rosa Mucignat and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen. A one-day series of roundtables organised in collaboration with and support from the BCLA, ILCS, and LINKS (London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies), held at the University of London’s Warburg Auditorium, Woburn Square in Bloomsbury, London, and hybrid. We would like to thank the Departmental Research Initiatives Fund at King’s College Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures for its generous contribution towards this colloquium. Programme and other details can be found here. If you missed the event, you can access the recordings, kindly provided by ILCS here.
4 July 2025: Behind the Scenes of Journal Publishing: A Conversation with CCS Contributors and Editors, hosted by two of the Comparative Critical Studies editors, Adhira Mangalagiri and Elisa Segnini. This virtual roundtable offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse into academic journal publishing in Comparative Literature. Contributors to the latest CCS issue (CCS 22.2) — published to mark the BCLA’s 50th anniversary and highlight ECR work — shared their experiences of traversing the diverse pathways comparative research takes on its journey onto the journal’s page.
11-12 September 2025: Comparative Literature and Decoloniality, a British Academy-funded conference, led by Mohamed-Salah Omri. Conference conveners included Paul Castro, Shanti Graheli, Fiona Macintosh, Georgia Nasseh, Josh Robinson, and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen. This central event in our 50th anniversary’s calendar revisited the intersection of comparative literature and colonialism to engage with the emerging worldwide ‘decolonial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences – a task which we felt was crucial to our anniversary celebrations, as we look back in order to look forward. The conference programme and further details can be accessed here. This conference would not have been possible without the generous funding and support of the British Academy, St John’s College, Oxford, and Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT), and the support of Ziad Kiblawi: we gratefully acknowledge and thank them.
11 December 2025: BCLA Online Research Seminar History, Literature, and Translation, led by Joanna Rzepa, with Shanti Graheli. The seminar celebrates the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) by bringing together scholars whose interdisciplinary work offers new perspectives on literature, history, and translation. The seminar is free to all, but registration is required at this page.
26 March 2025: Early Modernities BCLA Anniversary Workshop, online, led by Adrian Armstrong and Rachel Scott. The discipline of Comparative Literature has focused heavily on cultural activity from the long nineteenth century onwards. Although premodern (medieval and early modern) literatures have often been considered from a cross-linguistic perspective, they continue to occupy a relatively marginal position within Comparative Literature, especially in their relationship with literatures of later periods. The BCLA’s 50th anniversary year provides an ideal opportunity to reflect on present and future directions for work in the field. If you would like to take part, please send an abstract of your paper (max. 250 words) to the organizers by 14 December 2025. We expect to accommodate a maximum of nine papers. If accepted, your paper should be submitted by 6 March 2026, to allow enough time for advance reading. For submissions and further details, please reach out to Adrian (a.armstrong@qmul.ac.uk) and Rachel (rachel.scott@rhul.ac.uk).
Further events are being planned and will be released soon. If you have ideas for online workshops or seminars, please let us know by contacting Shanti.Graheli@glasgow.ac.uk.
