BSECS Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Conference
30 – 31 July 2025 | Bath Spa University
Call for Papers, deadline – 21 March 2025
We invite proposals for papers for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Conference 2025, held at Bath Spa University.
Bath is perhaps the epitome of an eighteenth-century city. Over the course of the century, Bath grew from a quiet market town to a metropolitan hub famous not just for the restorative qualities of its spa water but also for its sociability, routine activities, and notorious marriage mart. The eighteenth century was the period when some of Bath’s most iconic buildings, such as The Pump Room, The Assembly Rooms, and The Royal Crescent, were built and provided spaces for private and public elite entertainment. Early 1800s Bath is most famously captured in the novels of Jane Austen, who lived in Bath for a short time and reportedly disliked its frivolity. Despite this, in the twenty-first century, Bath is still frequently used as a backdrop for Austen adaptations, such as Sanditon (2019 – ), alongside other Regency period dramas such as Bridgerton (2020 – ) due to the preservation of its diligently ordered Georgian buildings. Yet behind the meticulous and uniform façades, Bath’s architecture hides its lack of uniformity, its disorganised and inconsistent design decisions, just as manners and politeness were important social masks. Many of Bath’s bricks hide stories of their colonial and slave funding, as well as the luxurious consumption and rituals of colonial products such as tea and sugar that were staged inside their walls.
Based on this concept of Bath as a city of façades – both literally and figuratively – our conference theme for 2025 is ‘Façades.’
Proposals related to any aspect of the long eighteenth century are welcome, but we particularly invite papers that address our theme. We invite proposals for individual papers, full panels of three papers, roundtable sessions, workshops or other innovative formats. Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to):
- Architecture
- Masquerades and costumes
- Interiors and exteriors
- Music and performance
- Gossip and sociability
- Fashion and dress
- Bath’s links to colonialism and the slave trade
- Relationships
- Hidden Histories
- Gender and the body
All submissions should be sent to postgrad@bsecs.org.uk for consideration. For individual papers, please send abstracts of 250 words and a short biography. For fully formed panels, (3-4 speakers), roundtables or workshops please send abstracts of 250 words for each paper along with brief details of the proposed theme, biographies of speakers, and proposed chair. CFP opens 10th January 2025 and closes 21st March 2025. We aim to get back to all speakers by mid-April with decisions and have the programme finalised by mid-May.
Conference Organisers:
Rachel Bynoth, Bath Spa University
Emma Pearce, Glasgow School of Art
Katie Noble, University of Oxford
Hardeep Dhindsa, Kings College London
Image: Wiki Commons