Welcome to the International Association of Byron Societies Conference 2026!
Join us at Keele University from 20th – 24th July 2026 to celebrate the work of Lord Byron
and his life and times.
Byron conferences bring together delegates from across the globe to discuss the latest developments in scholarship about the pre-eminent poet of the Romantic period. This conference will investigate the topics of change and consistency and permanence and transience, examining how Byron’s attitude to these issues shaped his work. See the full Call for Papers for details.
This landmark conference is the 50th meeting of the International Association of Byron Societies. The academic programme is complemented by a range of cultural activities including excursions to the stunning historic estate at Tatton Park and the V&A Wedgwood Museum in the Potteries, poetry readings and performances, and celebrations of the longevity of the international conference.
Keele University is a beautiful campus university located in the county of Staffordshire in the heart of the Midlands, UK. The conference venue is Keele Hall, a mid-Victorian mansion house that was the original centre of the university. The university has excellent transport links to Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.
St. Andrews
Gavin Hopps is Professor of Literature and Theology at the University of St Andrews. His books include Enchantment in Romantic Literature (2025), The Poems of Lord Byron, vols. IV and V: Don Juan (co-edited with Jane Stabler, 2024), The Extravagance of Music (with David Brown, 2018), Byron’s Ghosts: The Spectral, the Spiritual, and the Supernatural (2013), and Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart (2009).
Bowling Green State
Piya’s research and publications focus on the interdisciplinary and global contexts of nineteenth-century literature/material culture and their intersections with contemporary theory. She is the author of The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration (2005) and co-editor, with Matthew Green, of an essay collection, Byron and the Politics of Freedom and Terror (2011). Her most recent book Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire in Romantic and Victorian Culture: The Sultan's City, 1800-1876 was published by Bloomsbury Academic in July 2025, and presents a re- envisioning of encounters with the Eastern Mediterranean and Ottoman Turkey in Byron's work along with that of others. She also has an essay "Byron the Osmanli" forthcoming in a special issue of Studies in Romanticism "Byron and the Mediterranean", (October 2025) edited by Greg Kucich and Jeffrey Cox, which proposes a new approach to Byron's Turkish Tales.
Manchester
Alan Rawes is Senior Lecturer in Romanticism at the University of Manchester. His publications as author and editor include Byron’s Poetic Experimentation (2000), English Romanticism and the Celtic World (2003), Romantic Biography (2003), Romanticism and Form (2007), Reading, Writing and the Influence of Harold Bloom (2010), a special issue of Litteraria Pragensia on ‘Byron in Italy’ (2014), Byron and Italy (2017, winner of the 2018 Elma Dangerfield Prize), and The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron (2024). He is a past editor of The Byron Journal (2005-12) and was Joint President of the International Association of Byron Societies between 2012 and 2023.
Academic Committee:
Madeleine Callaghan, Peter Francev, Mirka Horova, Jonathan Sachs, Diego Saglia, Maria Schoina, Jonathon Shears
Conference Committee:
Jonathon Shears, Sharon Faulke, Lily Martin, Emily Paterson-Morgan