Events and resources

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: 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.

Venue: Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris

In brief: Dr Sam Coombes invited to speak at the 'Inscriptions en relation' colloquium in Paris.

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. 

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: 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

Read an article in French about the release of the book

Date: 20 July 2021

In brief: Sam Coombes featured in an episode on a series of radio broadcasts on France Culture about Edouard Glissant. His episode was titled 'Interroger le créolisation'.

The international symposium 'The Place of Memory in the literature and cultural productions of Anglophone diaspora' explored the cultural productions of diasporas, from the anglophone world (India, the Caribbean, Africa) to anglophone countries (Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom) within the contemporary period.

Organised in partnership with the University of Edinburgh, and co-organised by Françoise Král (Université Paris Nanterre), Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh), and Corinne Bigot (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès), the symposium was held on 3 and 4 October 2013. It brought together around 40 participants from all over the world.

This was the keynote speech of the conference, given by Professor Emeritus Jean-Jacques Lecercle.

Professor Françoise Král (Université Paris Nanterre) presents her paper 'Mémoire des Lieux et Lieux de la Mémoire des Diasporas Anglophones'.

How should the notion of memory, whether individual or collective, be redefined at the dawn of the 21st century in light of the new methods and policies of archiving collective memory or constructing the collective memory of peoples? The field of postcolonial studies is a particularly fertile ground for reflection on the use, or even the instrumentalisation, of memory, as well as the hazards of its journey and what is at stake during its construction.

This talk was given by Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh) at the “Inside/Out: Negotiating Multiple Identities in a Globalised World” conference held at Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle University in November 2012.