Booking now open for ‘Hidden Hands: Underexplored Influences and Identities in the Long Nineteenth Century’ online conference Bringing together researchers and academics from various disciplines, this conference asks what becomes visible when we look beyond the most familiar actors, institutions, and narratives of the nineteenth century. Join us to explore the hidden, overlooked, and indirect […]

15th January 2027 | Royal Holloway University of London (Hybrid) “We need, urgently, to reconnect with our planet, and recognise ourselves as inseparable rather than special; reliant upon rather than dominating” (Erica Fudge, 2022) This conference examines the long nineteenth century as the birth of the Anthropocene. As scientific developments reconfigured what it meant to […]

Each year BAVS awards the Rosemary Mitchell Book Prize to the best second monograph published the previous year in Victorian studies. The prize is named after the late Professor/Reverend Rosemary Mitchell (1967-2021).  Rosemary was a brilliant scholar who served on the board of BAVS.  Her superb work which covered history, literature and art history, embodied […]

The British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) is committed to the support of its members’ activities such as conferences, events and research activities. There are three funding streams currently available to BAVS members: 1) Events funding: up to £1000 is available to support the costs of an academic conference or event relating to Victorian studies. The Association and its Executive […]

As part of its ongoing collaboration with COVE (the Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education, covecollective.org), BAVS is launching a COVE research internship (which will bring with it a £2000 honorarium). The intern will receive training and support from members of the COVE team, and will be expected to undertake a minimum of 100 hours volunteering […]

From the meadow pipits, skylarks and standing stones of Ilkley Moor to the river at Saltaire where he met his end, a new audio documentary from the University of Leeds’ Cultural Collections unearths the chaotic, charismatic story of Bingley’s forgotten working-class poet. Known as The Airedale Poet, The Orpheus of Bradford and The Bingley Byron, […]

Victorian Literature (Associate or Full Professor) The Department of English at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for a full-time appointment at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor in Victorian Literature. A Ph.D. in Victorian Literature or a related field is required. Candidates should have a distinguished record of publication and a demonstrated […]

Volcanic Materiality in Literature and Art of the Anthropocene  Editor: Dewey W. Hall  Call for Contributions  Volcanic Materiality: Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene asserts that volcanic eruptions during the long nineteenth century contributed to the rise of the Anthropocene, which has been viewed as human impact on the climate and environment since James […]

Online Seminar Series October 2026 – June 2027 Wednesdays, 7.30 – 9 pm (UK time) To receive more information and Zoom links, please join our mailing list here 21 OctoberLOVE BEYOND DEATH Ana Orbegozo-Desdentado, ‘The Myth of Willowwood’Dr Cecilia Rose, ‘Pre-Raphaelite Ghosts: Spiritualism and the Paranormal in the Works of Rossetti, Millais and Bell Scott’ […]

RSVP/VPFA Online Study Day5-6 February 2027Keynote Speaker: Florence Boos (University of Iowa)Co-Organizers: Betty Hagglund and Lisa Robertson This online study day, the first co-organized by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) and the Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA), will bring together scholars from both societies to share knowledge and build expertise about understudied popular […]

Date: 29 January 2027, 10:00-17:00 Venue: Utrecht University (room TBC)Organiser: Bart Mulderij (University of Groningen)Credits: 1–2 ECs (assignment details will be shared closer to the date)Open to: MA and Research MA students, PhD candidates, and early-career researchers; OSL members have first access. A Dark Hunger: Appetite, Desire, and Consumption in the Gothic Imagination is a one-day […]

We are pleased to invite expressions of interest for a new JVC–BAVS Early Career Mentorship Scheme, a collaboration between the Journal of Victorian Culture (JVC) and the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS). The scheme is designed to support PhD students and early career scholars in developing their first peer-reviewed journal article. Successful candidates will […]

Railways: 200 Years that Transformed Britain will take place at Lancaster University on Saturday 21 November 2026, with the option to attend either in person or online. The conference is jointly organised by the Regional Heritage Centre and the Midland Railway Society, marking both the bicentenary of the birth of the railway and the 150th […]

The Hidden Hands Conference: Underexplored Influences and Identities in the Long Nineteenth Century will take place on Friday 20th November 2026 online. This conference aims to bring together members of the academic community who share an interest in the long nineteenth century and can shed light on underrepresented aspects of history. Speakers are welcome to cover […]

Occult Science: Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and the Persistence of Wonder 29 January 2027 – Online Despite enduring narratives that cast modern science as the agent of rationalisation, the relationship between scientific knowledge and the occult has never been a simple story of succession or exclusion. In recent years, scholarly discourse has increasingly challenged this presumed binary, […]

Empathy and the Victorian Novel Online Event – Centre for Victorian Studies, University of Leicester Thursday 22 October 2026, 5:00pm – 6:45pm (UK time) Elaine Auyoung (University of Minnesota) – “George Eliot and the Fragility of Readerly Empathy”  Suzanne Keen (Scripps College) – “Other-directedness before and after Comte: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders” Rachel Ablow (University at Buffalo, SUNY) – “Empathy, […]

Organised by British Association for Victorian Studies, BAVS@Home offers occasional online events that explore different aspects of nineteenth-century culture and its relevance to the contemporary world. Event details Format: Live, online, via Zoom Date: 30 September 2026 Time: 20:00 (JST), 12:00 (BST), 7:00(EST) Speakers Mr. Takuya Matsuzawa is currently a PhD student of Law at Waseda University Graduate School […]

Belcher Visiting Fellowship in Victorian Studies Applications are invited for the Belcher Visiting Fellowship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. The Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College are pleased to invite applications for two Belcher Visiting Fellowships in Victorian Studies, for the academic year 2027-2028 and the academic year 2028-2029 respectively. Applications are particularly encouraged […]

Thursday 17 September, 12pm ET / 5pm BST COVE is planning to build on the platform created for EVENT 2024 by starting a works-in-progress series. Papers will be made available for annotation followed by a live Zoom meeting. The first session will be on “Building in a Time of Crisis,” and will include the following […]

Romance, Revolution and Reform journal is currently accepting 15-20 minute papers and creative workshops for their January 2027 Conference, Ecosystems in the Long Nineteenth Century. We especially encourage submissions from PGRs and ECRs. See the attached CFPs for more information. Please send your 300 word abstracts with a 100 word biography to Charlotte at rrr@soton.ac.uk […]

Pleasing Terrors: The 2026 M R James Symposium ; Drayton Arms Theatre, 8 November 2026 Pleasing Terrors: The M R James Festival, is a Festival celebrating the life and work of Montague Rhodes James, the classic British ghost story writer and scholar. The 2026 inaugural edition includes a scholarly and literary symposium on the life and […]

Coinciding with the 180th anniversary of the publication of Dombey and Son in October 1846, the day will focus on how the concept of family informed Dickens’s life and works. The day begins with a brilliant opening plenary panel dedicated to ‘Dickens and Women’, and closes with a talk and dramatic reading by Malcolm Andrews on ‘Michael […]

Dates – 28 to 30 June 2027Theme – Politics, Place and Print CultureKeynote speakers – Philip Connell (University of Cambridge) and Porscha Fermanis (University College Dublin)  We’re thrilled to host the 14th International Walter Scott Conference at the University of Edinburgh, under the theme of ‘Politics, Place and Print Culture’. The conference will run from 28 to 30 […]

 2026-08-17 VICTORIAN SOUNDINGS Following from the Association’s recent conference in Auckland on the topic of ‘Victorian Soundings’, we seek contributions for a Special Issue on this theme. We invite scholarly articles (5000-8000 words) from both conference participants and other scholars. Information about the kinds of submissions we are after is below. The Guest Editor will be […]

The PRS Review invites contributions for a special issue on Pre‑Raphaelite Networks –the artistic, social, transnational, and digital connections that shaped the movement and continue to inspire creators today. Topics may include (but are not limited to): Global Pre‑Raphaelitism: how PRB ideas travelled beyond England. Transnational craft: art and craft as sites of cross‑cultural exchange. Creative circles: friendships, studios, […]

We would like to propose an edited volume that would explore the literal and metaphorical uses of light in the fictionalizations of the Victorian period in various media and genres. The remit The Victorian period saw the introduction of a multiplicity of overlapping technologies and cultural practices of lighting, which radically transformed labour and the […]

Queering the Pre-Raphaelites In advance of the first US exhibition on Anglo-Jewish artist Simeon Solomon (1840–1905), opening March 2027 at the Delaware Art Museum, we invite papers that “queer” the Pre-Raphaelites, their associates, and their followers. Solomon rose to prominence in the early 1860s with Old Testament scenes that critics believed he was uniquely suited […]

Lauren Alex O’Hagan is Research Fellow in the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University and Affiliate Researcher in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University. She specialises in the study of visual and material culture across a range of historical periods, geographical settings and subjects. Her most recent […]

 The Cinema Museum, London, SE11 4TH  Saturday 21st November 2026 The third British Music Hall Society Conference will take place on Saturday 21 November 2026 at London’s Cinema Museum, 10.00am to 7.00pm. The theme this year is CATERING FOR PEOPLE’S DESIRES AND NEEDS IN THE MUSIC HALL. We have had a tremendous response to our […]

CONAN DOYLE’S ORIENT 2nd October 2026 at Senate House, London Arthur Conan Doyle never visited Asia, but he had many and various dealings with the Orient in fact and in imagination, as an author of fiction (including the Sherlock Holmes stories), a traveller, an imperialist, a war correspondent, an amateur Egyptologist, and an investigator of […]