Deadline: Sunday 1 September 2024
Send your EoI or any questions to the BARS Secretary, Andrew McInnes (bars.secretary@gmail.com)
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR ROMANTIC STUDIES is pleased to invite Expressions of Interest for the 2026 International Biennial Conference. This will follow our most recent conference, ‘Romantic Making and Unmaking’, held in Glasgow and online in July/August 2024, which itself builds on four successful conferences (Cardiff 2015, York 2017, Nottingham 2019, and Edge Hill 2022 with NASSR). BARS membership and Conference attendance has grown and diversified over the past decade, and from which delegate feedback has been very positive.
Drawing on this momentum, we are very much looking forward to working with institutions in continuing to build on and to diversify the successful BARS model. Please consult the programmes for Cardiff, York, Nottingham and Glasgow as guides for your proposal. (As a joint BARS/NASSR conference, the Edge Hill conference took a slightly different format than one typical of BARS.) Organizers should note that in order to make BARS more accessible, we have moved to a midweek schedule, typically running from Tuesday to Thursday, with excursions taking place on the fourth day of the conference.
A decision will be made by the BARS Executive in autumn 2024 and the successful applicants will be invited to submit a report for the following Executive meeting. We will aim to announce the 2026 conference shortly after Glasgow 2024, as well as the BARS PGR/ECR 2025 conference, and will promote it on social media.
Host institutions are expected to take account of the following in preparing their Expressions of Interest:
Venue location, capacity and accessibility
We expect numbers could range as high as 250 to 275 delegates: please bear this figure in mind when bidding. You will need a plenary lecture hall large enough to accommodate these numbers, plus a sufficient number of breakout rooms and catering facilities (BARS conferences can normally have around ten parallel sessions). For North American colleagues in particular, the distance from a major airport and transport links will be an important factor, so please bear this in mind.
Organizers should offer a range of accommodation from traditional student-type lodgings through to hotel-level facilities. Sufficient cheaper accommodation to allow postgraduate participation is desirable: such accommodation should be within reasonable walking distance of the conference venue, or the organizers should make suitable travel arrangements to take delegates to and from the venue.
The venue should also meet the usual requirements for facilities in academic meetings, including Wi-Fi and PowerPoint/projection facilities in all rooms. It is desirable that the meeting rooms are in reasonable proximity to each other and that there is a communal meeting area or foyer, preferably with refreshment facilities so that delegates can socialize and browse publisher stands.
In order to comply with BARS’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, conference organizers should ensure that the venue, accommodation and transportation are fully accessible.
Hybrid and/or digital aspects
The COVID-19 pandemic instituted, necessarily, a swathe of changes to how academics gather and share their research. In particular, we were called upon to make use of digital technologies at a remarkable pace and scale. Some of these measures responded directly to the specific conditions in place at the time of events, while others were addressing longer-standing issues of inclusivity and accessibility. One of the major successes of the Edge Hill 2022 conference was its effective use of a hybrid approach to delivering the event, combining both digital and on-campus spaces to maximise access to global participants. Similarly, BARS 2024 will feature an on-campus event hosted by the University of Glasgow in late July, followed by a shorter online conference co-organized with the BARS Executive Committee in early August 2024.
While we expect to continue to see the inevitable return to on-campus conferences, BARS asks proposers to bear the lessons of the past years in mind by considering hybrid elements in their proposed package of events. How this is done is up to the proposers – there could be separate digital and campus-based components, as in the case of BARS 2024, or these could be run concurrently, as for BARS/NASSR 2022. We appreciate that institutions will have differing levels of support in this area, and we will work closely with the conference organizers in developing this strand.
Conference theme
This should be of sufficient scope and significance to allow the Association’s members to take part. Recent themes have been ‘Romantic Imprints’ (2015), ‘Romantic Improvement’ (2017), ‘Romantic Facts and Fantasies’ (2019), ‘Romantic Disconnections/Reconnections’ (2021 online), ‘New Romanticisms’ (2022) and ‘Romantic Making and Unmaking’ (2024). The full list of previous conferences can be found on the BARS website.
Timetable
The conference has typically taken place in the second half of July or in early August, with the conference commencing on the afternoon of the first day by the afternoon of the fourth. However, this is a flexible schedule, and proposers are permitted to deviate from this model. For example, BARS has traditionally run from Thursdays to Sundays, but the 2022 and 2024 conferences ran from Tuesday to Thursday to promote inclusivity.
The BARS Executive normally meet on the evening before the conference begins: organizers will need to arrange a suitable venue for this (two-hour) meeting. The meeting typically concludes with a short tour of the conference venue for the Executive members in attendance. In fixing on a date, it is especially important organizers should check which conferences are already scheduled for what is often a busy time in the calendar and liaise with conference and society chairs in order to avoid clashes wherever possible and facilitate attendance at all events. Conferences which run during summers and are likely to be attended by BARS delegates include those hosted by the British Association for Victorian Studies, the International Conference on Romanticism, the International Gothic Association, the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, as well as the Coleridge and Wordsworth Summer Conferences.
The CFP is usually circulated by October of the preceding year (2025) and the outcome of the refereeing process confirming speakers is usually made by the middle of January (2026), although recent events have demonstrated flexibility might be required when planning these deadlines.
Vetting of papers
The conference organizers will typically assemble a conference sub-panel for the review of proposals, and should include representation across the organizing institution’s staffing profile, from postgraduate members to members of the professoriate. Details of the composition of the sub-panel should be sent to the BARS Executive. Members of the Executive are available to provide further support or consultation, should the conference organizers wish. (It is desirable that papers are refereed not only for the integrity of the event, but also to help delegates secure financial support from funding bodies and institutions.)
Programme
The programme usually takes the form of parallel sessions consisting of panels where delegates deliver 20-minute papers. BARS welcomes convened and themed panels that reflect cutting-edge projects and collaborative research, and other formats such as roundtables and workshops. Consideration should be given to the mix of formats and how hybrid approaches should complement each other. For example, we found that digital panels in particular worked effectively using a roundtable format, with each speaker presenting shorter papers of up to 10 minutes each.
In addition, there are usually three to five plenary lectures, one of which is designated the Stephen Copley Lecture and another the Marilyn Butler Lecture in memory of BARS’s founding members and much-loved scholars. Plenaries are chosen by the local organizing committee, though BARS expects this to reflect a gender balance, a mixture of national and international scholars, and a diversity of career stages. In the arrangements of the panel sessions and the timing of the plenary lectures the organizers are asked to consider seriously the responsibility of offering all speakers a reasonable size of audience (it is now standard practice to end the conference on the final day with a keynote or a roundtable).
BARS expects panels to incorporate postgraduate and early career researcher opportunities alongside more established academics. The programme should also include specific sessions targeted at professional development for ECRs, which can be developed in conversation with and support from the designated BARS Postgraduate and Early Career Representatives.
Reception, Book Prize, Banquet, PGR/ECR reception
The BARS conference includes a reception (normally on the first night), a slot for the BARS First Book Prize awards (this can be done at the reception or can be separate), and a banquet (usually on the penultimate evening). It has increasingly been the case that informal meals are offered on the second night, although this depends on local factors such as whether the conference venue is campus-based or near a well-provisioned civic centre. Payment for the banquet is optional and can be purchased during registration. There should also be an evening slot for a reception aimed specifically at postgraduate and early career researchers: this typically takes the form of informal drinks and/or dinner, and often runs on the second night but should not be scheduled against the Banquet, in case PGRs/ECRs wish to attend.
Refreshments and lunches
BARS expects the conference registration fee to include refreshments (before the first sessions each day and regular 30-minute coffee breaks), buffet food for the reception, and lunches on days where the programming falls on both sides of 1pm (one of these can be a brown bag lunch on the excursion day). Please build this into your costs.
Conference excursion
It is usual to arrange an excursion or choice of excursions with laid-on transport within the schedule. This has often taken place on the afternoon of Day 3, and comprised a visit to a ‘Romantic’ venue with general relevance to the conference e.g. a museum, estate, birthplace, gallery. We are keen to explore offering the excursion on another day (e.g. the final day of the conference, or before the main activity of the conference commences), for reasons of inclusivity: e.g. for Glasgow 2024, a full-day excursion will take place the day after the conference closes. The excursion is always an optional extra in terms of costings and can be purchased during registration.
Biennial General Meeting
The conference organizers are required to find a central time (at least one hour, which can be the lunch hour) within the schedule to host the BARS Biennial General Meeting. Key aspects of the BGM are: presentation of reports from the Executive to Membership; introduction of the new BARS Executive for 2026–2028;* presentations on the PGR/ECR conference in 2027 and the announcement of BARS 2028.
*In the past, elections for the BARS Executive Committee were timed to run at the conference BARS BGM; however, since the pandemic we have moved to online elections, which has tended to have better participation by BARS Members. Elections for the 2026–2028 term, therefore, will be held in the later spring prior to the 2026 conference and the BGM will serve to introduce the newly constituted BARS Executive to Members in attendance.
Cost
Organizers are asked to keep costs as low as possible without compromising the quality of the event. Please provide as much information as you can about the predicted registration fee, including a day rate and discounted rates for PGRs, ECRs, retired and unwaged, as well as whether you propose to include discounted ‘early bird’ rates. In order to maximize inclusion, day rates must feature as part of the package offered to delegates, but do not need to be competitively priced against the full package.
BARS is willing to provide an appropriate level of support to its international conference. Any surpluses are expected to be shared 50/50 with BARS. Applicants should include in their proposals a statement from the appropriate management lead in their institution confirming this proposed division of surpluses.
The selection committee strongly encourages proposers to include indicative budgets with projected income and costings, in order to confirm the event’s viability and affordability for delegates.
Liaison
Organizers will maintain contact with the BARS Executive throughout the planning process. This is usually managed by the co-option of a local organizer onto the Executive for a period of two or more years. If feasible, a delegation from the Executive will also make a site visit in 2025 or early 2026 to check through logistics, run through the programme and offer general advice. The Executive will also approve the final programme.