THURSDAY, April 9th 2026

8:30 | WELCOME AND COFFEE

9:00 | OPENING WORDS

9:15 | PANEL 1: Aquatic Modernity/Modernisms

Chair: Julie Gay (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)

• José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas (Unversidad Complutense de Madrid) – Swimming Between Two Waters: How the Atlantic Waterscape Shapes Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass

• Fionn Bennett (Université de Reims) – ‘Allalivial, allalluvial!’: the Multifarious & Meandering Meanings of the ‘chittering tittering waters’ in James Joyces’ Finnegans Wake

• Andrea Zvoníčková (Charles University Prague) – Waves of Memory: Liquid Minds in Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘Requiescat’

10:30 | COFFEE BREAK

11:00 | PANEL 2: Watery Archives and Sea Remnants

Chair: Marion Bourdeau (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3)

• Aleksandra Nikčević Batrićević (University of Montenegro) – Watery Archives: Fluidity, Memory, and Place in Contemporary Irish Women’s Writing

• Audrey Robitaillié (Institut Catholique de Toulouse) – From Antrim to Ontario: Spectral Shorelines in Jane Urquhart’s Away

• Alice Townend (Université de Nanterre Stanley), William Hayter and John Montague’s Poems in “Sea Changes”

12:15 | LUNCH BREAK

14:00 | KEYNOTE LECTURE 1: John Brannigan (University College Dublin)

‘What birds were they?’: Avian Encounters in Archipelagic Writing

15:00 | COFFEE BREAK

15:30 | PANEL 3: Oceanic Currents and River Flows

Chair: Lea Sinoimeri (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)

• Virginie Trachsler (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) – A River Speaks: Talking Waters in Irish Poetry

• Rüveyda Büyüktelli (Atilim University) – A Poetic Dwelling Across Islands and Boglands

• Jenkin Benson (University of Notre Dame) – Others at the Shore: The Celtic Fringe, the Caribbean, and Archipelagic Poetry

17:00 | GUEST LECTURE: Ian Stephen – writer, artist, storyteller and sailor from the Isle of Lewis

17:45 | SCREENING: The Alphabet of Birds, written by Sara Baume, produced by Brendan Mac Evilly, Holy Show Productions

20:00 | CONFERENCE DINNER

FRIDAY, April 10th 2026

8:30 | WELCOME AND COFFEE

9:15 | PANEL 4: Coastal, Maritime and Archipelagic Landscapes

Chair : Philippe Laplace (Université Franche-Comté)

• Maxime Geervliet (University of Edinburgh) – The Oceanic Wanderer: Aquatic Mobility in Life Writing from/in Scotland

• Kelly J.A. Schmidt (University of Freiburg) – ‘Let the sea take it!’ – Loss, the Sea and Movement in Scottish Coastal Literature

• Marion Bourdeau (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3) – The mutational potential and mutating uses of the flux and flow in Colum McCann’s fiction

10:30 | COFFEE BREAK

11:00 | PANEL 5: Blue Environmental Knowledge

Chair: Catherine Conan (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)

• Catherine Kilcoyne (University College Dublin) – Daylighting Rivers: Engineering and Poetry in the Scottish and Irish Archipelago

• Rebecca Hunter (Queen’s University Belfast) – ‘Did you ever hear tell of the sturgeon?’: The transmission of blue knowledge, experience and memory in The Islandman and Twenty Years A-Growing

• Henri. N. Gorecki (Université de Lille) – Still Wakes the Deep, the Lovecraftian horrors of petro-capitalism in Scotland, a video game by the Chinese Room

12:15 | LUNCH BREAK

14:00 | KEYNOTE LECTURE 2: Glenda Norquay (Liverpool John Moores University)

15:00 | COFFEE BREAK

15:30 | PANEL 6: Watery Worlds and The Flux and Flow of Language

Chair: Marc Capliez (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)

• Cian Dunne (Queen’s University Belfast) – Alexander Blok’s influence, presence, and resonance in Máirtín Ó Direáin’s Éisc Aduain

• Jean Berton (Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès) – Linguistic flux and flow: the Scottish Gaelic and its Literature

• Virginie Buhl (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur), Not Quite Queer? Cross-Dressing and Gender-Fluid Circulations in Emma Donoghue’s Works

16:45 | CLOSING WORDS

17:00 | WALKING TOUR along the opal coast