2021 Conference: ‘Victorian Inclusion and Exclusion’, 14-16th July 2021
Hosted online by University of Greenwich, London
Keynote Day 1: Dr. Jess Cox (Brunel University of London) – “Excluding the Maternal Body in Victorian Popular Fiction”.
Keynote Day 2: Professor Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee (Warwick University) – “Energy Problems, SF and the Late-Victorian World”.
Keynote Day 3: Dr. Greg Vargo (New York University) – “You might say, sir … that they all were Chartists: Popular Theatre and Radical Politics in the 1830s and 1840s”.
Roundtable: “Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom : Reaching Interventions on Caribbean Authors” with Kira Braham, Heidi Kaufman, Breanna Simpson, and Indu Ohri.
Training Session: “Doing Things Digitally : An Introduction to Digital Resources and Text Mining Methods” with Dr. Emily Bell (University of Leeds).
Reading Group: “Against the Grain: Reparative Readings for Victorian Popular Fiction” hosted by Dr. Jesse Erickson (University of Delaware)
Greta Depledge PGR Prize Winner: Manon Burz-Labrande
Access the Programme, Abstracts and Bios and Reading Group Pack here.
#VPFAInclusion
2020 Conference: ‘Victorian Encounters and Environments’, 15-17th July 2020
Hosted online by University of Greenwich, London
Keynote: Professor Alexis Easley
Roundtable: ‘Teaching Victorian Sensation’, hosted by Chris Louttit with guests Anne Marie-Beller, Andrew King, and Beth Palmer
Series Launch: Key Popular Women Writers Series
Reading Group: Encounters with the ‘Third Sex’
Greta Depledge PGR Prize Winner: Mollie Clarke
Read the Report, Programme, Abstracts and Bios and Reading Group Pack here.
#VPFAEncounters
2019 Conference: ‘Mind Matter(s), Spirit: Forms of Knowledge in Victorian Popular Fiction and Culture’, 8-10th July 2019, University of Greenwich, London
Keynote: Chris Louttit
Keynote: Beth Palmer
Keynote: Christopher Pittard
PGR Professionalisation Workshop: ‘What is the REF and what is “research excellence”?’, hosted by Andrew King
Exhibition: ‘Late-Victorian & Edwardian Paperback Fiction’, curated by John Spiers
Greta Depledge PGR Prize Winner: Helena Esser
Read the Programme, Abstracts and Bios and Reading Group Pack here.
#VPFAMatters
2018 Conference: War and Peace, 3-7th July 2018, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Mariaconcetta Costantini
Keynote Speaker: Carolyn Oulton
Keynote Speaker: Cathy Waters
Exhibition: ‘How Novel was the Novelette?’, Curated by John Spiers, Introduction by Kara Tennant
Greta Depedge PGR Prize Winner: Rachel Egloff
Read the Programme, Abstracts and Bios, Reading Group Pack, Exhibition Booklet and CFP
You can read all about our collaboration with the Invasion Network in their blog post about our conference here
#VPFAWar
2017 Conference: Travel, Translation and Communication, 19-21th July 2017, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Mary Hammond
Keynote Speaker: Anne-Marie Beller
Keynote Speaker: Catherine Wynne
Exhibition: ‘Picturing the Mass Market, from the 1880s, in Britain’, Curated by John Spiers
Greta Depledge PGR Prize Winner: Eleanor Shipton
Read the Programme, Abstracts and Bios, Reading Group Pack, Exhibition Booklet, and CFP
#VPFATravel
2016 Conference: Victorian Popular Genres, 14-15th July 2016, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Joanne Knowles (Liverpool John Moores University)
Keynote Speaker: Andrew Maunder (University of Hertfordshire)
Exhibition: ‘Popular Victorian & Edwardian Fiction: From Cheaper, to Cheap, and then to Cheapest’, Curated by John Spiers
Greta Depledge PGR Prize Winner: Alison Moulds
Read the Programme, Abstracts and Bios, Reading Pack and CFP
#VPFAGenre
2015 Conference: Authenticity and Artifice, 13-15th July 2015, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: David Glover, ‘Styles of Popularism in Victorian Popular Fiction in the Long Nineteenth Century’
Keynote Speaker: Linda Dryden, ‘Stevenson and H G Wells: Monomaniacs, Duality and Evolutionary Science’
Guest Speaker: Ann Featherstone, ‘Sagacious Canines and Brave Brutes: Re-discovering the Victorian Dog-Drama’
Greta Depledge PGR Prize Winner: Duncan Milne
Read the Programme, Abstracts and Bios and Reading pack
2014 Conference: Treasure and Trash, 8-10th July, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Jonathon Shears (Keele), ‘“[…] battered […] soiled […] broken […] empty […] half-smoked […] stale”: The Hangover in Victorian Popular Fiction’.
Guest Speaker: Judith Flanders, ‘Painting Reality: Home vs. Home-ness’
Senate House Library Special Collections Talk and ‘hands-on’ mini-exhibition: Dr Karen Attar, ‘Trash, Treasure or Trashy Treasure at the Institutional Library’.
Read the Conference Report, Programme, Abstracts and Bios, and the Reading Group Pack
2013 Conference: Bodies and Victorian Popular Culture, 10-11th July 2013, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Elizabeth Hurren, ‘Dying for Victorian Medicine: The business of anatomy, body-trafficking, and the experience of being poor in popular culture’
Keynote Speaker: Pamela K. Gilbert, ‘Sentimental Bodies: Victorians and the reading experience’
Guest Speaker: Rose Collins, ‘Graves Matters’
Read the Programme and Abstracts
2012 Conference: Hard Cash: Money, Property, Economics and the Marketplace in Victorian Popular Culture, 11-12th July 2012, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Regenia Gagnier, ‘The Global Circulation of Victorian Popular Fiction’
Keynote Speaker: Deborah Wynne, ‘Hades! The Ladies! Male Drapers and Female Shoppers’
Guest Speaker: David Waller, ‘The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman’
Read the Programme
2011 Conference: Sex, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian Popular Culture, 18-19th July 2011, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Andrew King, ‘Hollywood’s Grandmas: Epistemology, Ethics and Erotics in the Victorian Transatlantic Popular Novel’
Keynote Speaker: Jennifer Phegley
Roundtable Discussion: Pamela Gilbert, ‘The Other Victorians: Sexuality and Victorian Popular Fiction’, and Janice Allen, ‘A Queer Marriage: The Relationship between Realism and Sensationalism’
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2010 Conference: Victorian Popular Culture: Prose, Stage and Screen, 22nd-24th July 2010, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Kate Newey
Keynote Speaker: Nickianne Moody
Read the Programme and Abstracts and Bios
2009 Conference: Victorian Popular Novelists 1860-1900, 10th-12th September 2009, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Pamela Gilbert
Keynote Speaker: Juliet John