ESSE Doctoral Symposium 28-29 August 2017

Symposium Announcement

The Symposium is designed to provide a platform for young scholars to present their work, specifically for PhD students who are writing their theses in English Studies and are at least in the second year of their doctoral studies at the time of the Symposium in question. They are invited to make a brief presentation of their work in progress in one of three areas, known as strands: English Language & Linguistics, Literatures in English, and Cultural & Area Studies. These presentations should deal with the issues addressed or hypotheses tested in the doctoral research, the results so far obtained, and above all the methodology applied, with the purpose of gaining feedback from peers and established scholars in the field. Each presentation will last no longer than 15 minutes, followed by 15 minutes’ discussion. Participants are expected to attend all the presentations in their own strand and to take part in the discussions. There will also be extensive opportunities for informal contact with other participants and with the academics present.

Note that each PhD student can submit an application to only one strand of the ESSE Symposium and should specify in the application which strand they wish to be placed in. Applications must include a letter from the student’s PhD supervisor giving the (working) title of the dissertation and confirming that the student is working under his/her supervision and has completed at least his/her first year of PhD studies.

The application should also include a summary of the project (of no more than 300 words), indicating:

  1. The main topic and issues, including the thesis proposed/hypothesis defended;
  2. The methodology (theoretical tools and standpoints);
  3. Where relevant, the corpus under consideration;
  4. The results obtained so far.

Each strand of the Symposium will be coordinated by two experts (to be known as Convenors). One will be chosen from the ESSE Board, while the other will come from the host university (in 2017, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki). They will make a selection from the applications received, respond to the presentations and chair the discussions.

Applications (also including the letter from the applicant’s supervisor) should be sent, no later than 28 February 2017, to the Coordinator of the ESSE Doctoral Symposium, Professor J. Lachlan Mackenzie (VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands) at lachlan_mackenzie@hotmail.com. The selection of submissions by the Convenors will be completed and announced by 15 March 2017.