The conference ‘Can Biography Survive?’ is the third?major event organised by the AHRC’s ‘Challenges to Biography’?Research Network, run by?Humanities in partnership with the University of Nottingham and of?Edinburgh.? The conference programme can be found on the Research?Network’s website, www.ahrcbiographynetwork.com. Podcasts available?via the website highlight the quality of discussion at the symposia?hosted by each of the partner universities over the past year.? This?July’s conference boasts an unusually impressive array of?contributors, drawn from both academia and the world of publishing.

Thus speakers include acclaimed biographers Richard Holmes and Claire?Harman, man of letters Frederic Raphael, pioneering bookseller Tim?Waterstone, Penguin editor Stuart Profitt, and poet turned professor?Robert Fraser.? The conference will focus upon the question of?whether biography, such a successful genre for so many years, now?faces a crisis of confidence, commercial and conceptual.? The range?of topics explored across two days in the plenary and panel sessions?is striking, and demonstrates the international character of the?conference.? Biography has proved a major area of intellectual?inquiry in recent years, as reflected in the high expectation?surrounding this unique gathering of academic and independent?biographers, critical commentators upon ‘life writing’, agents, and?publishers.

Further information see:

http://ahrcbiographynetwork.com/ or email Dr Adrian Smith?as5@soton.ac.uk