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 probed diaspora-related themes in a diverse range of ways.

The series was organised by the Diaspolinks research group and was open to all.

Group of people at an event in the Diasporic Trajectories Seminar Series

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. 

DateTitleChairSpeakersPapers
25 November 2016Postgraduate Diasporic Trajectories seminarDr Michelle Keown (University of Edinburgh)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 Strasbourg)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 2016Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar fourProfessor Françoise Král (Université Paris Nanterre)Professor Neil Lazarus (University of Warwick)Stone upon Stone: Land, Labour and Consciousness in World-Literary Perspective
   Dr Corinne Bigot (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès)Culinary dislocation: ethnic food memoirs and tales
21 October 2016Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar threeDr Nicola Frith (University of Edinburgh)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 2016Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar twoProfessor David Farrier (University of Edinburgh)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 2016Diasporic Trajectories 2016: Seminar oneDr Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh)Rada IvekovićEpistemological fractures: the decline of western paradigms
   Professor Alison Donnell (Reading University)Caribbean literary archives: the challenges of missing voices and precarious pages
13 November 2015Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar fiveDr Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh)Professor David Murphy (University of Strathclyde)The Performance of Pan-Africanism: performing black identity at major pan-African festivals, 1966-2010
   Dr James Procter (Newcastle University)Diaspora on Air: Radio and Lyrical Modernity
30 October 2015Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar fourDr Corinne Bigot (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès)Dr Michelle Keown (University of Edinburgh)Of goldfields, markets and murder: diasporic Chinese and Sinophobia in The Luminaries and Chinese New Zealand literature
   Professor Héliane Ventura (Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées)Matching the Unmatchable: Alice Munro's 'Pictures of the Ice' and James Galt's Bogle Corbet or The Emigrant
16 October 2015Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar threeDr Michelle Keown (University of Edinburgh)Professor Françoise Král (Université Paris Nanterre)Diasporising neo-imperial languages: towards a pragmatics of global (mis)understanding
   Professor John McLeod (University of Leeds)Transcultural Adoption and Diasporic Writing
25 April 2015Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar twoProfessor Françoise Král (Université Paris Nanterre)Dr Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews)Genocide Stories in Exile: Fiction from the Rwandan Diaspora
   Professor Susheila Nasta (Queen Mary College, University of London)Remapping Modernisms: Asian Bloomsbury and the Evolution of Global Modernities in Colonial London
13 February 2015Diasporic Trajectories 2015: Seminar oneDr Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh)Professor Charles Forsdick (University of Cambridge)Beyond the francophone: postcolonialism, comparatism, transnationalism
   Professor Janet Wilson (University of Northampton)“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.

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.


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 Král (Paris Nanterre University), Sam Coombes (University of Edinburgh) and Corinne Bigot (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès)

Abstract image for the Place of Memory conference

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

Read an article in French about the release of the book

DateVenueEvent
19 November 2019California State UniversityLecture: 'Literature, Globalization and Neoliberalism'
5 June 2019University College LondonLecture: 'Space in Relation - Édouard Glissant in architecture and urban studies'
May 2019Institut français, LondonAppearance at Beyond Words Festival
March 2019Université de la RéunionTwo lectures
31 January 2019Institut français d’EcosseTalk: 'Alternative Perspectives on Globalisation Today: Edouard Glissant’s poetics of resistance'
November 2018Institut français, LondonBook of the week
22 November 2018Glissant Institut du Tout-Monde, ParisPodcast appearance: Listen on Soundcloud

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: 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'.


This article was published on