Skepsi Postgraduate Conference 2026: "Unmuting"

A day of research and dialogue in the humanities, organised by the postgraduate journal of the Language Centre, University of Kent.
About this Event

Full programme below — Poster submissions still open (deadline: 31st of August)

Silence is never neutral. Voices may be muted through structures of power, disciplinary boundaries, linguistic limitations, or historical erasure. At the same time, acts of unmuting raise ethical and methodological questions: who speaks, for whom, and under what conditions? Unmuting seeks to foster dialogue on how silences are produced, sustained, contested, or transformed, and how attention to silence can reshape critical practice.

This interdisciplinary conference invites early-career researchers, including doctoral students and postdocs, to reflect on practices of unmuting across ecological, linguistic, cultural, and political contexts, fostering dialogue around key issues in silence, voicelessness and representation with particular attention to marginalised forms of knowledge, ecological discourse and identity. The day will also feature a development panel on the topic of publishing in journals.

The conference will take place in-person on Thursday 10th September 2026. It is organised by Louise Wigglesworth, Amy Bergman, Beth Waldock and Qiujing Fan, the co-editors of Skepsi, and will be hosted at the Language Centre, University of Kent.

Full programme (subject to change):

“Unmuting”: Skepsi Journal Postgraduate Conference

Seminar Room 1, Cornwallis East

Language Centre, University of Kent (Canterbury Campus)

Thursday 10th September, 2026

8:45am – 9:15am: Registration

9:15am – 9:30am: Opening Remarks

9:30am – 10:30am: Panel 1: Ecological Voice. Chair: Dr William Rowlandson

• Panagiotis Orfanos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens): Speculative Voices: Reimagining the Limits of Unmuting and Ethical Co-existence

• Louise Wigglesworth (University of Kent): ‘The Sloth Effect’: Mashavi as a Mode of Post-Anthropocentric Storytelling

10:30am – 11:00am: Coffee and poster session

11:00am – 12:00pm: Panel 2: Holocaust Studies. Chair: Dr Joanne Pettitt

• Sarah Wren (Northumbria University): Re-examining oral and video testimonies to reveal the language used when describing relationships built on sexual barter in concentration camps during the Holocaust

• Dr Rosalind Hulse (Royal Holloway, University of London): Speaking on Their Behalf: News Media’s Construction of the Castlemont Controversy (1994) and the Reinforcement of a Hegemonic Interpretation of the Public Sphere

12:00pm – 1:00pm: Lunch (not provided)

1:00pm – 2:30pm: Panel 3: Mixed Media. Chair: Dr Jeremy Scott

• Ami Nisa (Swansea University): Technology as a social construct: examining the camera’s subjectivity in found-footage horror

• Kiera Hayles (University of Kent): ‘Critical Fabric(ation)’ and Text(ile) Construction: Education, Emancipation and Empowerment through Needlework Samplers

• Gillian Li (University of Kent): Unmuting Trauma: Narration, Silence, and Intergenerational Transmission in Diasporic Mother–Daughter Relations

2:30pm – 3:00pm: Coffee and poster session

3:00pm – 4:00pm: Panel 4: AI. Chair: Dr Christina Kim

• Xin Lim & Xin Cai (University of Hull): The Tempest of AI: Labour, Control, and Coloniality in AI Systems

• Peijun Zhao (University of Kent): Unmuting or Rewriting? AI-Mediated Voice and Algorithmic Authority in L2 Chinese Writing Assessment

4:00pm – 4:45pm: Development panel: Journal publishing. Chair: Amy Bergman

• Dr Joanne Pettitt & Dr Larry Duffy

4:45pm – 5:00pm: Closing remarks