Helping to organise and participating in the Textualities Conference, the English Department’s postgraduate student-led conference, has been incredibly rewarding, not only because it was the first event of its kind that I participated in, but also a unique chance to experience this new side of scholarly work. As I was both presenting and writing, editing, and organising the conference website, I had the chance to observe the event from several viewpoints at once.
First phase: preparation
The groundwork for the conference was laid at the beginning of the semester: though nerves were initially high, I managed to narrow the topic down to two of my current interests, Frankenstein and posthumanist theory. The Pecha Kucha format—twenty slides of twenty seconds each—was different from any previous public speaking experience. I had to prioritise clarity and flow, as well as the visual storytelling aspect. Having little to no textual elements in the slides meant that images must integrate and illustrate the content, which proved to be slightly difficult in the more theoretical slides.
Second phase: research
Having decided that the focus of my presentation would be a posthumanist overview of artificial gendered bodies in Frankenstein, I wanted to explore the double relationship between Victor and the Creature. During rehearsals, I understood for the first time just how long—and how short—twenty seconds can be: we had to keep our talks accessible and engaging, without being vague or, alternatively, too obscure.
Third phase: “Mise en place”
There is a lot of unseen work behind the scenes of a conference, something I had not appreciated fully until actively doing it. I was part of the website team—alongside my coursemates Isabella and Nicole—and had to set up the website with all the relevant information for the event, as well as individual profiles for each of us presenting, with pictures, bios, etc. Our goal was to have a clean, minimalistic, and easy-to-navigate design.
The main challenge was coordinating with everyone else in order to collect all the necessary information on time to get the site up and running as per our schedule.
Final phase: the conference
The conference itself was in many ways a blur. Perhaps the nerves, lack of sleep, and overall sense of impending doom got to me, because as soon as we arrived I was ready to do my part and then have a dignified meltdown. Despite all my dramatics, I ended up enjoying myself terribly: the event was fast-paced and very engaging, I was very proud of my fellow panelists who managed to deal with tech-related issues with grace.
Presenting my work was exhilarating, and the Q&A—which had been a source of nightmares for me—ended up being my favourite part: we had a chance to truly engage with the audience, and have some healthy (but passionate) debates that gave me a glimpse into what a future academic career might look like.
In the end, Textualities 2025 was the perfect mixture of professionalism and entertainment: experiencing both sides of the event let me see how much hard work goes into the organisation of these things, and getting to work through it all with my coursemates got us all feeling, I hope, much closer than before.
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