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Breaking Barriers:

Empowering Interactions in Language, Literature, and Culture

MAY 14-15, 2025

ALDO MORO UNIVERSITY OF BARI, ITALY

The Segregation Wall

2025 AIA SEMINAR

Submit your proposal

The 2025 AIA Seminar “Breaking Barriers: Empowering Interactions in Language, Literature, and Culture” will take place at the Aldo Moro University of Bari on 14 and 15 May, 2025.

We invite contributions on a variety of discursive areas, from across different and / or cross-disciplinary research fields, welcoming diversity in theoretical and methodological approaches. Our elective focus, Breaking Barriers, offers itself to multiple inflections, showcasing the need for change and empowerment as a key quality that underlies recent developments in contemporary discourses, in the fields of – amongst others – (critical) discourse analysis, literary studies, cultural studies, (critical) disability studies, environmental studies, museum studies (‘New Museology’).

For more information, please see the Call for Papers section.

Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite submissions addressing the core topic from either theoretical or applied and text-focussed perspectives, in literature, linguistics, and cultural studies, including discussion of best practices in teaching and other professional experiences. Contributions from established scholars, early-career researchers, and PhD students are welcome.

Possible topics and research areas to be explored include, but are not limited to:

Academic, professional and corporate communication
Accessibility and disability studies
Digital Humanities and AI
Environmental humanities
Gender studies
Multimodality, intermediality and AVT
Medical humanities
Migration, border discourse and cultural mediation
News, mass media, social media
Political discourse
Specialized discourse and translation
Travel, tourism and heritage

Abstract Submission and Timeline

Panel sessions: 20-minute presentations + 10 minutes Q&A

Abstracts: max 500 words, including references

Conference papers will be considered for publication in dedicated issues of Textus and TTMC.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE

̶1̶ ̶M̶a̶r̶c̶h̶,̶ ̶2̶0̶2̶5̶ 10 March, 2025

ACCEPTANCE NOTIFICATION
15 March, 2025

CONFERENCE
14-15 May, 2025

REGISTRATION FEES

Eur. 80,00 (standard)

Eur. 65,00 (PhD students only)

Registration is now open for the AIA Seminar in Bari, 14-15 May 2025 at https://easypagamenti.uniba.it

Select “Products” --> “Iscrizione AIA Seminar 14-15 maggio 2025”. A receipt of payment can be downloaded at the end of the registration process.

Proposals shall be sent via Oxford Abstracts by clicking the button below.

Click to send your proposal

PLENARY SPEAKERS

FEATURED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Maria Grazia Guido

Professoressa Ordinaria di Lingua e Traduzione Inglese, Università del Salento

Maria Grazia Guido is Full Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Salento (Italy), where she is the Director of the Department of Humanities and member of the Academic Senate. She holds a Ph.D. in English Applied Linguistics at the University of London, Institute of Education. She is the Director of the scientific journal Lingue e Linguaggi and she has been the Coordinator of the International Ph.D. Programme in “Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures” at the University of Salento in agreement with the University of Vienna (double degree). Her research interests are in Cognitive Linguistics applied to English as a ‘Lingua Franca’ (ELF) in intercultural communication and Critical Discourse Analysis. Her monographs include: English as a Lingua Franca in Migrants’ Trauma Narratives (Palgrave Macmillan), English as a Lingua Franca in Cross-cultural Immigration Domains (Peter Lang), Mediating Cultures (LED), The Acting Interpreter and The Acting Translator (Legas).

Michaela Mahlberg

Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor of Digital Humanities, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Michaela Mahlberg is Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor and Professor of Digital Humanities at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, and honorary professor at the University of Birmingham. She previously held positions at the University of Nottingham, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University College and the University of Bari in Italy. Her publications include the monograph Corpus Stylistics and Dickens’s Fiction (Routledge, 2013), and she has been leading the development of the CLiC web app for the study of literary language. CLiC is now used in over 100 countries world-wide. Michaela is the editor of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (John Benjamins) and together with Gavin Brookes she edits the book series Corpus and Discourse (Bloomsbury). She is the Vice President of the international Dickens Society and she hosts the podcast “Life and Language”.

Alex Robinson

Honorary Fellow, University of Liverpool, Centre for the Study of International Slavery (CSIS)

Over the last twenty years Alex has combined academic research and teaching on slavery and heritage at the University of Liverpool, with work in the public domain. She was part of the DfES Understanding Slavery Initiative based at Merseyside Maritime Museum in 2003 and was co-opted onto the content team for the development of the International Slavery Museum (2003 - 2008) at Liverpool, leading on Plantation Slavery and the Fight for Freedom and Justice, and operating as text editor across the exhibition.

She has since curated exhibitions in the UK and the Caribbean, researched and collaborated with schools and minority ethnic groups to decolonise museum collections, produce films and has taught a number of courses on slavery and heritage for the History Department and Continuing Education at the University of Liverpool.

Elena Spandri

Professoressa Ordinaria di Letteratura Inglese, Università di Siena

Elena Spandri is professor of English Literature at the University of Siena. She is an active member of CISR and serves on the editorial board of La questione romantica. She co-directs the series of Modern and Comparative Literature (FUP/USiena Press). Her research fields include Romantic poetry and prose, Wordsworth, 19th century Anglo-Italian relations, Travel Writing, Anglo-American Orientalism, Literature and Religion, and the Indian novel in English. She has published articles on Wordsworth, Byron, Hazlitt, Southey, Mary Shelley, Lady Morgan, Elizabeth Hamilton, Fanny Parks, Giovanni Ruffini, Iris Murdoch, Julian Barnes, Howard Brenton, Amitav Ghosh, and Pankaj Mishra. Her books include a monograph on Wordsworth (La metamorfosi folclorica. Antropologia del narratore nelle Lyrical Ballads di W. Wordsworth, Campus 2000), one on Anglo-American Orientalism of the Romantic period (Wideworlds. L’Orientalismo nella letteratura inglese e americana, 1760-1820, Pacini 2009), a study on Buddhism in modern English literature (Il lampo e il loto. Percorsi del Buddhismo nella letteratura britannica moderna, Bibliotheca Aretina 2008), and an edited collection of essays on island writing (Twixt Land and Sea. Island Poetics in Anglophone Literatures, Artemide 2019).

Speakers

PROGRAMME

MAY 14