Call for Papers
for conference abstracts on the theme of

HOME, HOMECOMING, HOMESICKNESS.
Online International Emerging Scholars’ Conference
20 – 21 April 2026

The Academic Association for Doctoral Students & Students of English (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń) is pleased to announce the call for papers for the online young researchers’ conference held on the 20th and 21st of April on the themes of home, homecoming, and homesickness within Anglophone language, culture, and literature.

The trees are here all green again,
Here bees the flowers still kiss,
But flowers and trees seemed sweeter then;
My early home was this

John Clare “My Early Home”

With the modern world portrayed as a global village, and with rapid geopolitical changes of the 21st century, the concept of home becomes increasingly difficult to define. It may at first be associated with simple, universal terms such as love, safety, or childhood; however, when approached from various perspectives, it acquires a much broader, interdisciplinary meaning. Due to technological development, migration, environmental changes, and political tensions, people’s sense of belonging constantly evolves, and the lines between a home and a place of living blur. For some, returning home is an impossibility, while for others there was never a home to return to. Therefore, archetypes such as Homer's Odysseus, widely known for their constant search for home, may no longer represent the paradigm of a person longing for their homeland, but merely serve as a nostalgic model of a wanderer.
Given the wide-ranging nature of the topic, we would like to invite emerging researchers from the fields of linguistics, cultural and literary studies, and philosophy to share their thoughts and observations on the notions of home, homecoming, and homesickness.

Suggested topics may include:
• Migration and its portrayal in literature and culture;
• Transformation of vocabulary and dialects in the English language;
• Political and social approaches to the notion of home;
• Home aesthetics, cottagecore;
• Colonial and postcolonial homes;
• Trauma and loss;
• The relationship between the individual and the home country;
• Environmental studies – the relationship between home and the planet;
• Anthropology and anthropocentrism;
• Posthuman studies.

Please send your abstracts (max. 250 words) accompanied by a short bio (max. 150 words) to ncu.currents2026@gmail.com by 30 March 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 31March 2026.

The conference will take place online and is free to all participants. We invite researchers at all stages of their academic careers: BA, MA and doctoral students with interest in English studies.

Simultaneously, we plan to devote this year’s issue of Currents: A Journal of Young English Philology Thought and Review to the conference theme. A separate Call for Papers for journal articles will be released by the end of April.

The organising committee:

Joanna Porębska
Zuzanna Sanecka
Katarzyna Przygońska
Julia Jasińska
Agata Rupińska, MA
Agnieszka Staszak, MA
Maria Trif
Eylül Mural
Edgar Jephcote, MA
Edyta Lorek-Jezińska, PhD, NCU prof.
Nelly Strehlau, PhD