Events
Find out more about recent and past activities of the Diaspolinks research network, including selected seminars, conferences, lectures, workshops, podcasts, and recordings from events (2013 -).
Diasporic Trajectories Seminar Series
Diaspora studies is a growing area of research within the broader field of postcolonial studies. Its principal focus is the ways in which the experiences of migrant and displaced communities have been represented in thought, literature and art.
With the aim of encouraging underexplored comparative perspectives, the Diasporic Trajectories Seminar Series will probe diaspora-related themes in a diverse range of ways.
The series is organised by the Diaspolinks research group and is open to all.
Listen to Diasporic Trajectories on Soundcloud
Each seminar was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH).
Please note that speaker titles, as listed, date from the time of the event and may have changed.
| Date | Title | Chair | Speakers | Papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 November 2016 |
Postgraduate Diasporic Trajectories seminar |
Dr Michelle Keown | Justine Seran (University of Edinburgh) | Home Reimagined: the Indigenous Australian Diaspora |
| Alice Kelly (University of Edinburgh) | The Problem of Longitude’: Unplottable Subjects and the Erosion of European Diaspora in Joseph Conrad’s Malay Fiction | |||
| Sarah Arami (University of Strasburg) | Geographies of Identity: The Case of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf | |||
| Sarah Stewart (University of Edinburgh) | Shelter at the Border: Writing Back from the State of Exception | |||
| 28 October 2016 |
Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar four |
Françoise Král | Professor Neil Lazarus (University of Warwick) | Stone upon Stone: Land, Labour and Consciousness in World-Literary Perspective |
| Dr Corinne Bigot (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) | Culinary dislocation: ethnic food memoirs and tales | |||
| 21 October 2016 | Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar three
|
Nicola Frith | Professor Michael Syrontinski (University of Glasgow) | Achille Mbembe and the Untranslatable, from Globalization to Mondialisation |
| Professor Claire Joubert (Université de Vincennes à Saint-Denis) | Minor Global Poetics and the Geopolitics of Knowledge from Colonial to Global | |||
| 15 April 2016 |
Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar two |
Professor
David Farrier |
Professor Bill Marshall (University of Stirling) | French Atlantic Cities in Translation |
| Dr Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh) | Approaching Diaspora and Alter-Globalisation via the later works of Edouard Glissant | |||
| 19 February 2016 |
Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar one |
Dr Sam Coombes |
Rada Iveković |
Epistemological fractures: the decline of western paradigms |
| Professor Alison Donnell (Reading University) | Caribbean literary archives: the challenges of missing voices and precarious pages | |||
| 13 November 2015 | Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar five | Dr Sam Coombes | Professor David Murphy | The Performance of Pan-Africanism: performing black identity at major pan-African festivals, 1966-2010 |
| Dr James Procter | Diaspora on Air: Radio and Lyrical Modernity | |||
| 30 October 2015 | Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar four | Dr Corinne Bigot | Dr Michelle Keown | Of goldfields, markets and murder: diasporic Chinese and Sinophobia in The Luminaries and Chinese New Zealand literature |
| Professor Héliane Ventura | Matching the Unmatchable: Alice Munro's 'Pictures of the Ice' and James Galt's Bogle Corbet or The Emigrant | |||
| 16 October 2015 |
Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar three |
Dr Michelle Keown | Professor Françoise Král | Diasporising neo-imperial languages: towards a pragmatics of global (mis)understanding |
| Professor John McLeod | Transcultural Adoption and Diasporic Writing | |||
| 25 April 2015 | Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar two | Professor Françoise Král | Dr Nicki Hitchcott | Genocide Stories in Exile: Fiction from the Rwandan Diaspora |
| Professor Susheila Nasta | Remapping Modernisms: Asian Bloomsbury and the Evolution of Global Modernities in Colonial London | |||
| 13 February 2015 |
Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar one |
Dr Sam Coombes | Professor Charles Forsdick | Beyond the francophone: postcolonialism, comparatism, transnationalism |
| Professor Janet Wilson | “Wavering between two worlds”: Liminality in anglophone diaspora writing |
Lectures and talks
Worlding in Tongues: World Literature and the Polyglot Turn
Dates: 18 to 28 July 2022
Venue: Johannes Gutenberg University
Speaker: Françoise Král
In brief: Françoise Král was invited to present a seminar series at the Harvard University Institute of World Literatures. The eight seminars focused on contemporary anglophone world literature, reflecting on cultural resilience and idiosyncrasies and their role as cultural and political counterforces, and highlighted how literary texts can express the resilient ruggedness of a globalised world.
Browse the full 2022 programme on the Institute of World Literatures website
Dates: 20 to 30 July 2020
Venue: Online
Speaker: Françoise Král
In brief: Françoise Král invited to present a seminar series at the Harvard University Institute of World Literatures in Belgrade. The eights seminars focused on the role and responsibility of literature in a globalised world, and covered a large variety of literary, linguistic and epistemological issues through the dual focus of theorization and literature.
Browse the full seminar list on the Institute of World Literatures website
Venue: Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris
In brief: Dr Sam Coombes invited to speak at the 'Inscriptions en relation' colloquium in Paris.
Conferences and symposia
Edouard Glissant, La Relation Mondiale conference
Dates: 2 to 11 August 2022
Venue: Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy
In brief: This nine-day, multidisciplinary conference on Edouard Glissant comprised lectures, roundtable discussions, translations workshops and poetry performances. Dr Sam Coombes was on the organising committee alongside Tiphaine Samoyault (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3) and Christian Uwe (University of Minnesota).
Dates: 3 and 4 October 2013
Venue: Université de Caen Basse-Normandie
Keynote speaker: Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Université Paris Ouest)
Organisers: Françoise Kral (Paris Nanterre University), Sam Coombes (University of Ddinburgh) and Corinne Bigot (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
In brief: A two-day, international conference on new areas of investigation on the link between nostalgia and diaspora, including trauma studies and creation of collective memories. The conference comprised a keynote lecture, a round-table discussion, and twelve themed workshop sessions.
Book releases and events
Diaspora in the Oxford Bibliographies
Date: April 2020
In brief: An entry on the topic 'Diaspora' written by Françoise Král was published in the Oxford Bibliographies (OUP, 2020).
Date: December 2019
In brief: The publication of Diasporic Trajectories: Charting New Critical Perspectives as a special issue (volume 55, issue 6, 2019) of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing (Taylor & Francis/Routledge). This volume brings together in article form a number of the papers which were presented at the 'Diasporic Trajectories' seminar series held at Edinburgh University's IASH.
Following the release of his book 'Edouard Glissant: A Poetics of Resistance' (Bloomsbury, 2018), Dr Sam Coombes went on an international book tour, which included giving lectures and talks across universities and cultural institutions, and appearing at festivals.
Find out more about the book on the publisher's website
| Date | Venue | Event |
|---|---|---|
| November 2019 | California State University | Lecture on 'Literature, Globalization and Neoliberalism' |
| 5 June 2019 | University College London |
Lecture on 'Space in Relation - Édouard Glissant in architecture and urban studies' |
| May 2019 | Institut français, London | Appearance at Beyond Words Festival |
| March 2019 | Université de la Réunion | Two lectures |
| 31 January 2019 | Institut français d’Ecosse |
Talk on 'Alternative Perspectives on Globalisation Today: Edouard Glissant’s poetics of resistance' |
| November 2018 | Institut français, London | Book of the week |
| 22 November 2018 | Glissant Institut du Tout-Monde, Paris |
Podcasts
Le métissage échappe-t-il à l'essentialisation?
Date: 4 November 2022
In brief: Sam Coombes did an interview with Avec Philosophie alongside Jean-Luc Bonniol (Aix-Marseille University), where they discussed mixed race identities and creolisation.
Date: July 2021
In brief: Sam Coombes featured in an episode on a series of radio broadcasts on France Culture.