Sites of Memory: making, remembering, forgetting
15 - 17 May 2026
Hybrid Conference – in person and simultaneously online
Aberystwyth University
The Thirty-sixth Annual Conference
of the Association for Welsh Writing in English
15 - 17 May 2026
Hybrid Conference – in person and simultaneously online
Aberystwyth University
The Thirty-sixth Annual Conference
of the Association for Welsh Writing in English
Registration now open!
Draft Conference Programme
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Call for Papers
You want to know about my village.
You should want to know even if you
Don’t want to know about my village.
(Lynette Roberts, ‘Plasnewydd’).
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.
(RS Thomas, ‘The Bright Field’).
‘the grammar of place and time is jumbled; the tenses inside me are dislocated. I have existential jetlag…in this life, I’m apologising to the ghosts twice over: first for having left, and second for never properly leaving’
(Patrick McGuinness, Ghost Stations, xi, 17).
The proliferation of 'Cofiwch Dryweryn' graffiti across Wales brings to the fore the importance of collective memory and place in the constructions of any communities. The process of making nations requires selective memory-making, remembering and forgetting. Pierre Nora refers to lieux de mémoire (sites or spaces of memory) as ‘any significant entity, material or non-material…which has become a symbolic heritage of any community’. Aberffraw, Aberfan and many places in between are physical Welsh lieux de mémoire. Other areas, such as Hilda Vaughan’s Radnorshire, Rebbecca Ray’s suburban adolescence in A Certain Age or Margiad Evans’s March are less tangible, more elusive and intimately shaped by complex issues of gender, class and sexuality, childhood and the processes of ageing.
This year’s conference invites contributors to engage with specific places/spaces, memories, emotions and ageing in anglophone Welsh literature and culture in any genre and period to explore the individual and collective rememberings and forgettings that produce the multiple definitions and experiences of Wales. We widen the lieu to include not just iconic physical spaces but also events, memories, social structures and collective or personal experiences. What are the tensions, the amnesias, the structures of feeling and changes in consciousness found in these texts?
Colleagues are asked to propose papers and panels on themes including (but not restricted to):
- Language, learning and Cynefin
- Welsh childhoods
- Learning to be Other
- Knowledge, self-knowledge, revelation and forgetting
- Histories and narratives of institutions, networks, organisations, ‘lieux de mémoire’ and emerging identities
- Countercultural Wales
- Contested stories and histories
- Literary and cultural silences, contestations and estrangements
Proposals for 20-minute papers or multi-contributor panels should be sent to the organisers via the form below by 1 March 2026. Proposals for individual papers should be no more than 300 words long and should include a short biographical note. Proposals for panels should be no more than 500 words long and should include short biographical notes for each participant. Please keep a copy of the text you submit, as the form will not generate a copy of the submission for you.
Proposals (either for individual papers or for panels) may be for critical work or for creative-critical crossover work.
We welcome papers from independent, new and emerging scholars. We strongly encourage diversity in the constitution of all panels.
Conference Fees
Full weekend delegate rate (including accommodation): £235
Reduced weekend delegate rate (including accommodation): £120 (student, unwaged and low waged)
Zoom access: £10
Reduced weekend delegate rate (including accommodation): £120 (student, unwaged and low waged)
Zoom access: £10
Latest news and discussions
For all AWWE discussions, please use the hashtag #awwechat on Bluesky.
Contact
To contact the conveners, Professor Diana Wallace and Dr Aidan Byrne with any queries or suggestions, please email [email protected]
