Conference presentations

2025

  • Irene Pérez Fernández: “‘Who’s Loving us? Let us show you’: Black British Love Stories”, Contemporary Women’s Writing Conference, University of Falmouth, 18-20 June 2025.
  • Astrid Schwegler-Castañer: “#asian-rep-culture #demisexual #rivals-to-lovers”: Imagining Asian Australian Romance”, Contemporary Women’s Writing Conference, University of Falmouth, 18-20 June 2025.
  • Paloma Fresno-Calleja: “Saying it with a Love Story”: Writing the Diverse Asian American Experience”, Contemporary Women’s Writing Conference, University of Falmouth, 18-20 June 2025.
  • Irene Pérez-Fernández: “Malorie Blackman’s Nought and Crosses and its Intertextual Fabric: Romeo and Juliet Revised for a Contemporary Stage”, Shake-Art 21! International Conference on Shakespeare Activism and the Arts, University of the Balearic Islands, 14-16 May 2025.
  • Miquel Pomar-Amer: ““I don’t want a Romeo and Juliet story. I want an ordinary life”: The Pursuit of a Happy Ending despite Family Sanction in Burns Road Kay Romeo Juliet (2024)”, Shake-Art 21! International Conference on Shakespeare Activism and the Arts, University of the Balearic Islands, 14-16 May 2025.
  • Paloma Fresno-Calleja: ““That doesn’t sound like Shakespeare”: Comic Subversion and Reparative Love in Pasifika Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet“, Shake-Art 21! International Conference on Shakespeare Activism and the Arts, University of the Balearic Islands, 14-16 May 2025.

2024

  • Irene Pérez Fernández: “Love and Socio-political Activism in Bolu Babalola’s Black British Campus Romance”, 47th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, 6-8 November 2024.
  • Miquel Pomar-Amer: “Wedding Countdown: Finding Love or Arranged Marriage in Asian British Romantic Fiction”, 47th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, 6-8 November 2024.
  • Paloma Fresno-Calleja: “Reorienting Happiness: Affective Equality and Reparative Love in Rebecca K. Reilly’s Greta & Valdin“, 47th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, 6-8 November 2024.
  • Inés Hernández Martínez: “Non-Monogamies Are Also Allowed for Main Characters: Polyamory in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women“, 47th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, 6-8 November 2024.
  • Inmaculada Pérez-Casal: “Adolescence, love and resistance in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X”, XIII International Conference of the Asociación Universitaria de Estudios de las Mujeres AUDEM, Universidad de Córdoba, 23-25 September 2024.
  • Astrid Schwegler-Castañer: “Levelling up young-adult romance: Negotiating intersectional experience in Two Can Play That Game“, ESSE Conference, University of Lausanne, August 26-30, 2024.
  • Jayashree Kamblé: “A Colourful Scandal: Racism, Reputation, and Reparation in Talia Hibbert’s A Girl Like Her (2018),” Sex, Scandal, and Sensation Conference, Falmouth University, July 1-4, 2024.

2023

  • Hsu-Ming Teo: “Exploring Anachronism, Ornamentalism, and Citizenization in the Postracial Regency World of Bridgerton“, Historical Fiction Research Network’s Symposium on Reparative History, 9 December 2023.
  • Inmaculada Pérez-Casal: “Coding Latinx Identity in Contemporary American YA Romance”, 46th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias, 8-10 November, 2023.
  • Paloma Fresno-Calleja, Irene Pérez Fernández, Aurora García Fernández: “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”: Romancing the Postcolonial Syllabus”, Round Table, 46th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias, 8-10 November, 2023.
  • Astrid Schwegler Castañer: “The mechanics of romantic love in Florence”, 46th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias, 8-10 November, 2023.
  • Miquel Pomar-Amer: “‘Terrorists are not born to love, are they?’ Forging a new romance hero in Sara Naveed’s Our Story Ends Here“, 46th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias, 8-10 November, 2023.
  • Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez: “Female Empowerment and Participatory Culture in the Nigerian Web Series Skinny Girl in Transit“, 46th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias, 8-10 November, 2023.
  • Mariana Ripoll-Fonollar: “Suffragettes Fight Back: Edith Garrud and the Art of Suffrajitsu”, 46th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias, 8-10 November, 2023.
  • Miquel Pomar-Amer: “Shaping up the terrorist-hero for romance in Sara Naveed’s Our Story Ends Here“, Muslim Women’s Popular Fiction Conference, University of Birmingham, 5-8 September 2023.
  • Aurora García Fernández: “Unburdened Secrets, Conjectured Truths and Troubled Voices: Kate Grenville’s literary quest for non-Indigenous affective resettlement in Australia”. Australia From the Heart: Envisioning Affective, Environmental and Material Reparations, Palma de Mallorca, 6-8 September 2023.
  • Inmaculada Pérez-Casal: “The YA romance as a tool for social transformation: the case of Ismée Williams’ This Train is Being Held.” IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023.
  • Irene Pérez-Fernández: “Black British Love Matters: Revitalising Contemporary Romantic Narratives”. IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023.
  • Mariana Ripoll-Fonollar:” Suffragette Historical Romances: Re-Purposing Women’s Suffrage in a Postfeminist Context.” IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023.
  • Cristina Cruz-Gutierrez: “Skinny Is the New Fat”: Traditional and Modern Nigerian Beauty in Skinny Girl in Transit“. IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023.
  • Paloma Fresno-Calleja: “Reading “Plus Size” Romantic Narratives Intersectionally: Lani Young’s Scarlet Series.” IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023.
  • Hsu-Ming Teo: “The Australian Convict Prostitute Romance: Narrating Social and Sexual Justice for “Damned Whores”. IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023 (online).
  • Jayashree Kamblé: “Black Love, Society, and Subject Status in Britain: Dell’s Entwined Destinies (1980) as a Milestone in Category Romance”. IASPR Conference -Romance Revitalised, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2023.
  • Amy Burge. “Ayisha Malik’s ‘Sofia Khan’ Trilogy and the Re-Making of the British Chick Lit Genre”, Breaking Convention: Diasporic Fiction and the Re-Making of Genre, King’s College London, 16 May 2023.
  • Hsu-Ming Teo: “Using anachronism to narrate social and sexual justice in the Australian convict prostitute romance”, Historical Fiction Research Network Conference, 17-19 February 2023 (online).

2022

  • Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez: “Postromanticizing Nigeria in Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s Stay with Me“, 45th AEDEAN Conference, 16-18 November 2022, University of Extremadura.
  • Mariana Ripoll-Fonollar: “Mourning Revolution: Memorialising the Suffragette in Tracy Chevalier’s Falling Angels“, 45th AEDEAN Conference, 16-18 November 2022, University of Extremadura.
  • Astrid Schwegler-Castañer: “‘Try Not Translating, What Happens?’: Linguistic Opacity in Vivian Pham’s The Coconut Children“, 45th AEDEAN Conference, 16-18 November 2022, University of Extremadura.
  • Mariana Ripoll-Fonollar: “Wording Deeds: The Figure of the Suffragette in Contemporary British Fiction”. ESSE Doctoral Symposium, University Johannes Gutenberg, 29 Aug-2 September 2022.
  • Amy Burge. “Creating precarious empathy through fictional representations of migration”, IRiS International Conference, University of Birmingham, 14-16 September 2022.

Keynotes and Guest Lectures

  • Miquel Pomar Amer: “Long gowns, arranged marriages and voracious matchmaking aunties: Austen in 21st-century Pakistani texts”, Research Seminar: “As many forms of love, as moments in time: Jane Austen at 250”, University of the Balearic Islands, 15 April 2025.
  • Paloma Fresno Calleja: “Austenmania! Jane Austen in Contemporary Popular Culture”, Research Seminar: “As many forms of love, as moments in time: Jane Austen at 250”, University of the Balearic Islands, 15 April 2025.
  • Carolina Fernández Rodríguez: “Slap a Bonnet on the Cover…: The Case of Quaker Romances”, 10th International TRANSLIT Seminar: “Manifest Dresstiny: Corporeal, Affective and National Text(ile)s”; University of Oviedo, 19 March 2025.
  • Cristina Cruz Gutiérrez and Mariana Ripoll Fonollar: Guest speakers at the “Romance Studies Today” seminar, Carleton University, Ottawa, 28 November 2024.
  • Heike Missler: “Frauenliteratur? Gender und Genre am Beispiel der popular romance”, Lecture, Saarland University, 17 July 2024.
  • Heike Missler: “Black British Women’s Writing: Candice Carty-Williams Queenie (2019) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019)”, Lecture series on British literature in the 21st century, Saarland University, 9 January 2024.
  • Miquel Pomar Amer: “British-Pakistani Literature in the 21st Century” 2 May 2023, guest lecture. Tricontinental Lecture Series, University of Barcelona.
  • Hsu-Ming Teo: “‘Reparative Dreamings of Citizenship in the Koori Lit of Anita Heiss”, Keynote Lecture, 2023 EASA Conference – Australia from the Heart: Envisioning Affective, Environmental and Material Reparations”, University of the Balearic Islands, 6-8 September.
  • Mariana Ripoll-Fonollar: “The Suffragette: Revolution, Romance, Reparation”, Guest lecture. University of Le Havre Normandie, 15 November 2023.
  • Irene Pérez Fernández: ““Diversifying British Romance: Black Love Matters”, guest lecture. Seminar The Affective Politics of Romance: From Research to the Classroom, University of the Balearic Islands, 26 October 2023.