18 Dec Call for Papers
Association for the Study of Australian Literature Annual Conference
Australian Literature in the Digital Age
29 June -3 July, 2026
The University of Queensland
In 2026, ASAL celebrates AustLit. It will be 25 years since AustLit went online, becoming a fully digital research platform and strong partner in contemporary Australian literary scholarship. AustLit has hosted dozens of research projects, curated datasets, online exhibitions and information trails. The most significant of these is BlackWords, but AustLit also supports datasets on narratives of climate fiction, writing disability, audiobooks, children’s literature and more. AustLit enables researchers to conceive of Australian literature as a vast, changing field of works, writers and institutions, and this conference highlights AustLit’s role and impact.
The University of Queensland is delighted to host the 2026 ASAL conference and invites delegates to help celebrate AustLit’s quarter century by thinking about Australian literature, authorship and scholarship in the digital age. The conference will focus on Australian literary culture, Australian literary history and futures, and the broad range of methodologies and critical approaches that characterise them.
We welcome a broad range of papers including but not limited to the following:
- Australian literary field and networks, past and present
- Data and data-driven approaches to Australian literary studies
- Digital/computational methods in Australian literary studies
- Technology, AI and storytelling in Australian literature
- Indigenous data sovereignty and data governance
- First Nations storytelling
- Form and genre in Australian literary studies
- Race, ethnicity and cultural heritage
- Australian publishing, including self-publishing
- Australian literary history
- Critical perspectives on Australian literary cultures
- Humanist and posthumanist perspectives on Australian literature
- The role of the author in the digital age
- Transnational literary studies
- Translations of Australian literature
- Queer perspectives on Australian literature
- New materialism in Australian literary culture
- Australian children’s literature in the digital age
- Literary value and literary prizes
Convenors: Anna Johnston and Maggie Nolan
The conference will be face-to-face only and standard papers will be 20 minutes in length.
Proposals for individual papers or panels of 300 words + bios of no more than 50 words should be sent to [email protected] by 1 March 2026.