Newsletter for the 22nd Biennial Conference of the ISRLC
10-13th, September 2026

All,

The 22nd Biennial ISRLC Conference finished on Sunday, 13th of September, after three days of engaging and inspiring sessions, plenaries, art events, dialogue and late-night conversation. Hosted in the Stirling Court Hotel on the beautiful campus of the University of Stirling, and under the towering figure of the Wallace Monument, the conference brought together over 110 delegates across 17 countries around the globe, including as far away as Japan, China, India, Australia and South Africa. This year’s theme, “Dis-rupture”, proved a potent invocation for the many interdisciplinary presentations and exchanges that took place over 13 panels and 30 sessions. Rupture has been a common experience around the globe on multiple fronts and at manifold levels, and participants considered how dis-rupturing forces might both rend asunder and reunite, both disrupt and heal.

The conference was launched Thursday afternoon by Richard Kearney (Boston College) in a keynote address exploring the dis-rupture between the Anthropocene and Symbiocene. This wide-ranging and erudite discussion set out many of the key ideas that were to recycle through the sessions that followed, as we were called to re-examine the nature of our relationship with the earth – in domination or in symbiosis? – and with the technologies we are all too rapidly developing that threaten this earth.

A second keynote address Saturday evening delivered by Mayra Rivera (Harvard) further helped us to re-situate ourselves in relation to the other around us. Here we were guided by the work of Édouard Glissant towards a poetics and pedagogy of ruptures, approaches that open up the social and material depths of our present condition to help us find, as Prof. Rivera called it, the balance between dis-rupture and persistence.                

The conference also featured two “artists in residents”. The first, Roland Biermann (based in London), installed his Stations 3 artwork on the grassy mound behind the Stirling Court Hotel for the duration of the three-day conference. On direct view while dining, participants were confronted with an intriguing and provocative version of the artist’s Stations series, which have been exhibited in London, New York, and Amsterdam, and which juxtapose the religious traditions of the Stations of the Cross and the St. Andrews Cross with modern reliance on fossil fuel and the many dangerous crossings – environmentally, politically, militarily – that undermine world order stability. Directly following the conference, the sculpture was dismantled and relocated to another site on the University campus, where it will sit until Spring as part of the University’s Art Collections own theme for 2026-27, The Year of Topography.

The second artists Deborah Lewer (Glasgow) and Colin Greig (Perth), in full consonance with the conference theme, but in full dissonance with the corporate venue in which the event took place, performed two Dada pieces, “Dada Fragments from the Cabaret Voltaire” and the Dada Nativity, a sonic manifestation of both historic and contemporary dis-rupture. These were striking, confrontational and yet deeply moving pieces that for many brought the conference discussions to a powerfully visceral level. Dr. Lewer is also an Art Historian at the University of Glasgow, and her performance is part of an ongoing research project on Dada and its continuing influence. Comments on the performance, by those in attendance, are thus welcomed by Dr. Lewer, who can be contacted with thoughts (scholarly or personal), photographs, or video at Deborah.Lewer@glasgow.ac.uk.

As General Secretary of the ISRLC, but also as host of this year’s conference, I am extremely grateful for the support and commitment of the organising committee members who worked alongside me to make this conference the success that it was: Fiona Darroch (Stirling), Alison Jasper (Stirling) and Lois McFarland (Edinburgh). Their efforts in helping to shape and deliver the programme were invaluable, and they deserve more credit than I can place in words here.

 The business meeting that typically concludes our conferences dealt with several significant transitions. The first is that, as I announced in 2024, I am stepping down as the General Secretary of the Society after many years in the post. I was therefore delighted to announce that Alana Vincent (Umeå University, Sweden) will now take over this position. As per our constitution, I will overlap with her for one year, to ensure a smooth hand-over; I will also take over the vice-president’s role, in support of the new incoming president who will pilot us through to the next conference in 2028. Those holding the Society roles of Treasurer and Communications Officer (Eva Baillie and Sage Elwell respectively) have agreed to roll over their terms for one more cycle, while the role of Literature and Theology Journal Representative (Richard Rosengarten) will be reassessed after consultation with the new ISRLC General Secretary and the (relatively) new General Editors of the Journal.

 The second transition is, of course, to our next conference in 2028, and we are happy to confirm that Jochen Schmidt at the University of Mainz, together with his team of Eva Baillie and Sam Shearn, will host our next gathering. Prof. Schmidt, who will thus take over the Presidency, spoke briefly of early plans to work the conference (at least in part) around the fact that Mainz was home to Johannes Gutenberg and his Gutenberg Press. We look forward with great anticipation to what will emerge from this team’s planning.

Those unable to join us in Stirling this year missed out on an energising and inspiring three days. But we know that 2028 will continue our conversations, and will broaden the scholarly rapport that is the hallmark of our interdisciplinary endeavours, and so we encourage you to mark off time in your calendars now – early autumn, exact dates to be determined – and to start monitoring closely your budget, so that you can join us in two years’ time.

With warm wishes,

Andrew Hass
Outgoing General Secretary
Vice-president
International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture