Programme
THURSDAY, April 9th 2026
8:30 | WELCOME AND COFFEE
9:00 | OPENING WORDS
9:15 | PANEL 1: Aquatic Modernity/Modernisms (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
Chair: Julie Gay (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
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’
José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas (Unversidad Complutense de Madrid) – Swimming Between Two Waters: How the Atlantic Waterscape Shapes Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass
10:30 | COFFEE BREAK
11:00 | KEYNOTE LECTURE 1 (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
John Brannigan (University College Dublin): ‘What birds were they?’: Avian Encounters in Archipelagic Writing
12:00 | LUNCH BREAK
13:30 | PANEL 2: Oceanic Currents and River Flows (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
Chair: Lea Sinoimeri
Virginie Trachsler (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) – A River Speaks: Talking Waters in Irish Poetry
Rüveyda Büyüktelli (Atilim University) – A Poetic Dwelling Across Islands and Boglands
- Alice Townend (Université de Nanterre) – ‘Periodic rhythms of the open sea / upon which we balance and slide, / hoping for pattern’: intersections between William Hayter’s engravings and John Montague’s poetic sequence ‘Sea Changes’
14:30 | COFFEE BREAK
15:00 | PANEL 3: Blue memory and environmental writing (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
Chair: Marion Bourdeau (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
- N. Gorecki (Université de Lille) – Still Wakes the Deep, the Lovecraftian horrors of petro-capitalism in Scotland, a video game by the Chinese Room
- Anastasiia Danyliuk (University of Vienna) – The Poetics of Flux and Flow in Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places.
- 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
- 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 (Amphi 1 – Saint Louis 1)
17:45 | SCREENING: The Alphabet of Birds, written by Sara Baume, produced by Brendan Mac Evilly, Holy Show Productions (Amphi 1 – Saint Louis 1)
20:00 | CONFERENCE DINNER
FRIDAY, April 10th 2026
8:30 | WELCOME AND COFFEE
9:15 | PANEL 4: Coastal, Maritime and Archipelagic Landscapes (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
Chair : Lea Sinoimeri (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
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: Archipelagic (eco)poetics (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
Chair: Catherine Conan (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)
- Audrey Robitaillié (Institut Catholique de Toulouse) – From Antrim to Ontario: Spectral Shorelines in Jane Urquhart’s Away
- Catherine Kilcoyne (University College Dublin) – Daylighting Rivers: Engineering and Poetry in the Scottish and Irish Archipelago
- Stéphanie Noirard (Université de Poitiers) – Waters of War: Flux, Flow, and the Island Imaginary in Scottish First and Second World War Poetry
12:15 | LUNCH BREAK
14:00 | KEYNOTE LECTURE 2 (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
Monika Szuba (University of Gdańsk): ‘Wrapped in Weather’: Atmospheric Entanglements in Scottish Writing
15:00 | COFFEE BREAK
15:30 | PANEL 6: Watery Worlds and The Flux and Flow of Language (Salle des Actes — Le Musée)
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 | TOUR of Chateau d’Hardelot and its natural preserve