A PDF copy of the conference programme can be accessed at this link.
Registration for the conference is now open on Eventbrite.
Please note that all conference participants must be members of the Samuel Beckett Society.
We encourage all conference participants to register as early as possible. Registration will close on Friday 2 May 2025.
Conference Schedule
Pre-Conference Special Screening: Earl. (dir. Ty Kim, 2025)
Wednesday 4th June, 17.30-21.00 (Project Room, 1.06, 50 George Square)
We are delighted to be welcoming director Ty Kim to Edinburgh for an in-person advanced screening of award-winning documentary Earl. in conjunction with the Samuel Beckett Society Conference 2025. This event will include a Q&A session with Ty Kim followed by an informal reception. You can find out more about this event and reserve a space here.
DAY ONE: THURSDAY 5TH JUNE
08.45-09.30 Registration and Coffee (Project Room, 1.06, 50 George Square)
09.30-09.45 Welcome
09.45-11.15 Parallel Panels 1a and 1b
Panel 1a: Beckett’s Philosophical Relationships (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Douglas Atkinson (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Patrick Bixby (Arizona State University), ‘Beckett and Lefebvre: The Quotidian in Postwar France’
Burç İdem Dincel (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Falter, Stammer, and then Admit Failure: Beckett, Hölderlin and the Frenzies of Tragic Writing’
Einat Adar (University of South Bohemia), ‘Relations of the Mind: A New Approach to Beckett’s Philosophical Notebooks’
Erik Tonning (NLA University College / University of Bergen), ‘The Creator-Creature Relationship in Beckett’s Work’
Panel 1b: Beckett Across Media (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Jonathon Heron (University of Warwick)
Jonah Howell (CUNY), ‘Accursed Procreator: Chaplin’s Influence on Beckett through their Works and Lives’
Galina Kiryushina (Charles University Prague), ‘“A relationship once started not likely to fail”: Early Experimental Film and Beckett’s Entourage’
Rina Kim (University of Auckland), ‘Behind the Scenes: Beckett the Director and his Collaborations’
Jonathan Bignell (University of Reading), ‘Impactful Relationships: The Production and Reception of the Open University’s Waiting for Godot (1977) on BBC TV’
11.15-11.30 Coffee Break (Project Room, 1.06, 50 George Square)
11.30-13.00 Parallel Panels 2a and 2b
Panel 2a: Beckett, Power, Society (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Nicholas Johnson (Trinity College Dublin)
Matthew McFrederick (University of Reading), ‘Beckett and British Censorship: “When does the fun with the LC begin?”’
Katherine Weiss (California State University, Los Angeles), ‘Cellmates: Beckett’s Relationships with the Confined and Confinement’
Anita Rákóczy (Károli Gáspár University), ‘“Nohow On”: Endgame in Red’
Panel 2b: Beckett, Learning, and Teaching (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Laura Salisbury (University of Exeter)
Anthony Cordingley (University of Sydney / Université Paris 8), ‘Unlearning Beckett’
James Brophy (University of Maine), ‘Bringing up the Bones: Beckett’s “Cascando” and the Idiosyncratic “Learning” of Poets’
Matthijs Engelberts (University of Amsterdam), ‘Beckett in the Wake of Modernism’s Connections to Academia’
David Pattie (University of Birmingham), ‘Beckett, Memory and this Scholar’
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-15.30 Parallel panels 3a and 3b
Panel 3a: Beckett’s Mediated Bodies (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Julie Bates (Trinity College Dublin)
Molly Crozier (University of St Andrews), ‘Disability and Dependency between Maylis Besserie and Samuel Beckett’
Celia Graham-Dixon (University of Reading), ‘Mediated Relationships: Gender, Desire and Interfaces in Samuel Beckett’s Ghost Trio’
Hajin Park (Waseda University), ‘Framing, Space and Body between Television and Live Performance in Quad’
Panel 3b: Beckett’s Irish Relationships (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Feargal Whelan (Trinity College Dublin)
Killian Beashel (UCL), ‘Samuel Beckett, Jack B. Yeats and the Economy of Interwar Literary Prestige’
Jennifer M. Jeffers (Cleveland State University), ‘Reframing Beckett’s Non-Relationship with James Arthur O’Connor’s The Poachers’
Georgina Nugent (University College Cork), ‘Against Influence: Tracing Beckett’s (un)relationships with Contemporary Irish and Northern Irish Women Writers’
Michael Coffey (Independent Scholar), ‘Staging Semblance of Relations: Howe, Godot, Swift, Lear’
15.30-15.45 Coffee Break (Project Room, 1.06, 50 George Square)
15.45-17.00 Panel 4: Beckett and Suzanne Dumesnil (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Elizabeth Barry (University of Warwick)
Emilie Morin (University of York), ‘The Quiet Work of Suzanne Dumesnil’
Julie Bates (Trinity College Dublin), ‘“We were on the same road at the same moment, that was the only certainty”: The Postwar Writing of Samuel Beckett and Suzanne Dumesnil’
Dúnlaith Bird (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord), ‘Fantôme en place: Suzanne Dumesnil, Musique Jeux, the “F—” story, and “Françoise”’
17.10-18.00 Lightning Talks (LG. 11, 40 George Square)
Anna Girling (University of Edinburgh), ‘Samuel Beckett, Nancy Cunard and the Forms of Surrealism’
Olivia Kulczycky (Boston University), ‘Sonic (Im)materiality in Beckett’s Nacht und Träume’
Nadia Louar (University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh), ‘Textual Relationships: Manuscripts, Publications, and Beckett’s Grey Canon’
Darren Gribben (Independent Scholar), ‘Stories from Beckett’s Garden: “…another journey from, like so many”’
18.00 Drinks Reception, Room 4.55, Edinburgh Futures Institute
Sponsored by the Consulate General of Ireland in Edinburgh / Ard-Chonsalacht na hÉireann
DAY TWO: FRIDAY 6TH JUNE
08.45-09.30 Registration and Coffee
09.30-10.45 Parallel panels 5a and 5b
Panel 5a: Listening with Beckett (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Emilie Morin (University of York)
Maria Ristani (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), ‘With “ear dead centre”: Beckett’s Attuned Listeners’
Minfang Hu (University of Bristol), ‘Beckett’s Multimodal Translation: “Pangs of faint light and stirrings still”’
Matthew Reeder (Northwestern University), ‘Schubert: Between Beckett and Jelinek’
Panel 5b: Beckett, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Celia Graham-Dixon (University of Reading)
Feargal Whelan (Trinity College Dublin), ‘“Raised in gunfire—lacerated with psychoanalysis”: Beckett and Mary Manning as Young Dubliners’
Elizabeth Barry (University of Warwick), ‘Beckett’s Theatre and the Relational Dynamics of Midlife’
Evangelia Danadaki (University of Leeds), ‘“Relations-without-relating”: Reading Beckett with Ettinger’
10.45-11.00 Break
11.00-12.30 Parallel panels 6a and 6b
Panel 6a: Beckett, Containment, Disaster (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Umar Shehzad (University of Edinburgh)
Laura Salisbury (University of Exeter), ‘Beckett’s Disaster Bags’
James McNaughton (University of Alabama), ‘Beckett, Racial Capitalism and Conspiracism’
Ros Maprayil (University of Reading), ‘“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on”: An Exploration of Home in Beckett’s The Expelled, The Calmative, and The End’
Panel 6b: Beckett’s Languages: Repetition, Intertexts, Coteries (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Anna Girling (University of Edinburgh)
Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp / University of Oxford), ‘Beckett’s “Mittelalterliches Dreieck” and Other Intertextual Relationships’
Michelle Taylor (University of Cambridge), ‘Samuel Beckett in Nancy Cunard’s Coterie’
Benjamin Wilson (University of Cambridge), ‘Parroting’
James Martell (Lyon College), ‘Beckett and Truth’
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.00 Parallel panels 7a and 7b
Panel 7a: Beckett’s East Asian Relationships (LG.11, 40 George Square)
Chair: Benjamin Wilson (University of Cambridge)
Douglas Atkinson (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), ‘“In my life, since we must call it so”: Beckett and the Japanese Shishōsetsu’
Camille Hervé (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), ‘Beckett’s Unnamable, Nothingness, and Kitaro Nishida’
Tank Tsai (National Taipei University of Technology), ‘The Influence of Beckett on the Crosstalk Drama in Taiwan’
Yeeyon Im (Yonsei University), ‘Beckett’s Purgatory and Buddhist Klesha’
Panel 7b: Beckett in Translation and Adaptation (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Georgina Nugent (University College Cork)
Maria José Carrera (University of Valladolid), ‘“Don Philip the Second”, or Imperial Castile in Beckett’s Translations of Mexican Poems’
Mirna Sindičić (University of Zadar), ‘Transnational Dialogues: Samuel Beckett and Radomir Konstantinović’s Intellectual Exchange and Its Impact on Yugoslav Literary Reception’
Stiene Thillman (RADA / Independent Scholar), ‘There’s fan all over for you: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in Online Fanfiction’
José Francisco Fernández (University of Almería), ‘Beckett’s Relationships in Dance First (2023) by James Marsh’
15.00-15.20 Coffee Break
15.20-15.30 Not I, performed by Jeni Jones (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
15.30-17.00 Roundtable: Beckett’s Relationships in Theatre (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Chair: Stanley Gontarski (Florida State University)
Nicholas Johnson (Trinity College Dublin)
Jonathan Heron (University of Warwick)
Hannah Clarkson (Royal College of Art, London)
Amjad AlShalan (King Saud University)
Jeni Jones (Director, Producer, Performer)
17.15-18.00 Book Launch (Screening Room, G.04, 50 George Square)
Barbara Bray, A Woman of Letters: Translator, Radio Producer, Scriptwriter, Critic, and Theatre Director (Routledge, 2025) by Pascale Sardin. In conversation with Francesca Bray.
DAY THREE: SATURDAY 7TH JUNE
9.30-10.30 Early Career Networking Event (Project Room, 1.06, 50 George Square)
10.30-12.00 Samuel Beckett Society AGM (Project Room, 1.06, 50 George Square)
12.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-16.00 Afternoon Activities
Option 1: Arthur’s Seat Walk, Holyrood Park
Meet at 50 George Square to depart at 14.00. You can also join the group at the Holyrood Park Road entrance just beyond the Commonwealth Pool at 14.20. The terrain is not particularly challenging but requires a basic level of fitness, trainers or walking boots, and a waterproof jacket in case of rain! You can find information about the park on the website.
Option 2: National Galleries of Scotland, The Mound
Meet at the National Galleries entrance on Princes Street at 14.00. The galleries are free for all. You can find further information, including information about accessibility, on the website.