Agents, Texts and Networks in Historical Perspective
20-23 September 2027
Ghent University, Belgium
It gives us great pleasure to announce that the next official conference of the History and Translation Network will be held at Ghent University in Belgium, 20-23 September 2027.
The conference will explore the dynamic interactions between individuals, texts, and networks across time. Participants will be invited to reconsider what it means to be an “agent of translation” and to examine how human and non-human agents have created, mediated, and transformed textual and social networks in diverse historical contexts. From celebrated literary translators to often-forgotten mediators (editors, publishers, annotators, colonial interpreters, and machines), translation has always depended on complex networks of agents whose contributions have too often been overlooked or erased.
Possible topics will include:
- translator branding
- gendered and postcolonial invisibility
- archival recovery of neglected translators
- the historical circulation of texts (manuscripts, print, and digital)
- the materiality of texts and media ecosystems
- the shifting boundaries between human and non-human mediation
- and the social, intellectual, and communication networks that helped shape culture
By bringing together scholars working on translation history, cultural theory, and digital humanities, the conference seeks to map new ways of acknowledging the labour, creativity, and politics of translation across time and media.
“Agents, Texts and Networks in Historical Perspective” aims to open up a dialogue between past and present, recovery and re-evaluation, in order to reconsider who speaks, who is remembered, and who remains at the margins of translation history.
An official Call for papers with full details on how to submit a proposal will be sent out shortly