Our Events
The Centre for Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck regularly hosts leading conferences, symposia and research workshops relating to all aspects of contemporary literature, culture and theoretical approaches.
Forthcoming Events:
- 27 May 2020: The New Audacity
- 11-12 September 2020: Beyond Borders: Empires, Bodies, Science Fictions
Past Events have included:
- 12-14 September 2019: Productive Futures: The Political Economy of Science Fiction
- 20 June 2019: The Perverse Universals of the Microeconomic Mode
- 22 May 2019: Terminal Documents: Re-Reading the non-Fiction of J.G. Ballard
- 21 May 2019: Irish Times: Myles na gCopaleen's Cruiskeen Lawn
- 10 November 2018: Transitions 8: Mapping New Directions in Comics Studies
- 31 October 2018: Booker Prize Reading and Q&A with Mohsin Hamid
- 14-15 September 2018: Sublime Cognition: Science Fiction & Metaphysics
- 1 September 2018: Utopian Acts
- 25 November 2017: Ruin and Rebuild: Exhibition of Urban Dereliction
- 27 November 2017: Booker Prize Reading and Q&A with Julian Barnes
- 21 September 2017: Waste: A Symposium, Papers on Disposability, Decay, and Depletion
- 16 September 2017: Organic Systems: Environments, Bodies and Cultures in Science Fiction
- 10 June 2017: Child Be Strange: A Symposium on Penda's Fen
- 26 May 2017: Dystopia Now Conference
- 16 May 2017: What Goes Around: Fifty Years of The Third Policeman
- 18 May 2017: He Doesn’t Talk Politics Anymore
- 17 May 2017: Will 2017 be 1984?
- 16 May 2017: The Contemporary: An Exhibition
- 16 May 2017: A Country Road, A Tree
- 10 April 2017: David Brin at Birkbeck
- 2 March 2017: The Limits of Estrangement Panel Discussion
- 25 January 2017: Eimear McBride in Conversation with Jacqueline Rose
- 19 November 2016: Transitions 7: Mapping New Directions in Comics Studies
- 1 July 2016: True Crime Fictions Conference
- 28 June 2016: Coming of Age Stories: Now and Then
- 8 June 2016: Prize Culture & Contemporary Publishing
- 20 May 2016: You Must Mutate: the Future of Fiction
- 18 May 2016: Max Porter in Conversation
- 18 May 2016: The Contemporary: An Exhibition
- 17 May 2016: Remembering Flann O'Brien
- 11 May 2016: Comics Studies: Beyond the Canon?
- 23 October 2015: Living, Thinking, Looking: An International Conference on the Writing of Siri Hustvedt
- 3 July 2015: Action Writing: The Politics of US Literature, 1960 to the Present
- 21 May 2015: Historical Fictions
- 18 May 2015: Environmental Futures: Oil, Ecology, Petrocultures
- 6-7 March 2015: Stage the Future: The 2nd Annual Science Fiction Theatre Conference
- 7 February 2015: Supposedly Fun Things: A Colloquium on the Writing of David Foster Wallace
- 15 December 2014: Booker Prize Reading and Q&A with Hilary Mantel
- 22 November 2014: Rupture, Crisis, Transformation: New Directions in US Studies at the End of the American Century
- 25 October 2014: Transitions 5: Mapping New Directions in Comics Studies
- 11 July 2014: Colours of Memory: An International Conference on the Writing of Geoff Dyer
- 20 June 2014: Transmission: Hari Kunzru Workshop and Conversation
- 30 May 2014: Flying: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Kate Millett
- 12 May 2014: Stranger Than Fiction: An Evening with Travis Elborough
- 26-27 April 2014: Stage the Future: The First Conference on Science Fiction Theatre
- 21-22 March 2014: Invisible Circus: An International Conference on the work of Jennifer Egan
- 27 November 2013: Booker Prize Reading and Q&A with Alan Hollinghurst
- 8 November 2013: The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid Genres
- 2 November 2013: Transitions 4: Mapping New Directions in Comic Studies
- 25 October 2013: Contemporary Narratives of Care
- 7 September 2013: le Carré's People: Celebrating 50 Years of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
- 5 June 2013: Invocations of Modernism: Q&A with Will Self
- 20 May 2013: Science and Writing Symposium
- 3 March 2013: Symposium on Iraq War Culture
- 7 November 2012: Booker Prize Reading and Q&A with Kazuo Ishiguro
- 3 November 2012: Transitions 3: an annual day symposium on new directions in comics studies
- 14/15 September 2012: Weird Council: international conference on the writing of China Miéville
- 6 July 2012: Weather Reports – A Symposium on the work of Steven Connor
- 20 June 2012: Creative Writing Today
- 6 June 2012: Josh Cohen: Privacy and the Wish to Sleep
- 11/12 May 2012: 21st-Century British Fiction: a two-day symposium
- 9 March 2012: WAR-NET meeting on the representation of war up to and including Iraq
- 14 November 2011: Booker Prize Reading and Q&A with Sarah Waters
- 23 July 2011: Calling all Agents: a day symposium on the work of Tom McCarthy
- 10 July 2010: Occasional Music: a day symposium on the work of Jonathan Lethem
- May 2009: After the War: a two-day conference
- 22 May 2009: Money Talks: symposium on Martin Amis’s Money
- April 2008: Narratives in Transition: a two-day conference