The 34th International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Dissidence

King’s College London: July 4, 2025, and the University of Sussex: July 5-8, 2025.

In July 2025, the University of Sussex and King’s College London hosted the 34^th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf on the theme of ‘Woolf and Dissidence.’ With over 350 participants from around the globe, this was the largest Woolf conference to date, and the first time that the conference has come to Sussex — a place with strong Woolfian connections, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s home Monk’s House, and a unique archive of Woolf’s writings held in the University of Sussex Special Collections at the Keep.

Beginning with pre-conference events at King’s College London, participants took part in archive visits and a roundtable discussion on ‘Virginia Woolf: Creative Engagements’, featuring writers Jo Hamya and Olivia Laing, artist A T Kabe Wilson, and dramaturg Uzma Hameed.

The conference proper took place at the University of Sussex and featured two keynote lectures: Anne Fernald, ‘“Dangerous Days”: A Century with Clarissa Dalloway’, and Madelyn Detloff, ‘Throwing a Brick Like a Grrrrl: When to Build, When to Break in Perilous Political Times.’

On Saturday 5^th July, there was a performance at the Attenborough Centre of Creative Arts (ACCA) of an adaptation of Between the Acts relocated to an immigration detention centre in 2039. The adaptation, written by Eleanor Lybeck and directed by Jen Heyes was followed by a post-performance Q&A with Refugee Tales and the Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees (AVID), in which the audience heard moving testimony about the power of creative advocacy work in the ongoing effort to end indefinite immigration detention.

The conference also featured: a roundtable to mark the centenary of Mrs Dalloway and the publication of Mark Hussey’s biography of that novel; interactive workshops, including a printing workshop, a bookbinding workshop, and a visit to the Monk’s House Papers; a lunchtime discussion featuring Urmila Seshagiri in conversation about her new edition of A Sketch of the Past; a plenary discussion on Exhibiting Modernism Today, featuring Darren Clarke, Charlie Porter and Hope Wolf; and visits to Charleston, Monk’s House and the Sussex Modernism exhibition at the Towner Eastbourne.

In our ‘Exhibitors and Booksellers Hall’ we were joined by representatives from our local bookshop City Books, Edinburgh University Press, Manchester University Press and the Bloomsbury Heritage Series, as well as local and international artists and makers. Participants were also invited to visit Pressing Matters: Printing with Virginia Woolf, an exhibition that brings together contemporary art that engages with the work of Virginia Woolf as both a modernist writer and publisher, curated by the Centre for Modernist Studies and on display at the University of Sussex Library Exchange until 29 September.

In keynote lectures, individual papers, and roundtable discussions, participants explored Woolf’s role as a dissident writer and thinker, taking up creative, critical, even dissident approaches to Woolf’s work. During the conference, Woolf emerged as a writer whose reckoning with the historical crises of her own era speaks powerfully, even urgently, to our own crises today.

The conference was co-organised by Helen Tyson, Katherine Blackadder, and Michelle Gibson at the University of Sussex, and Clara Jones and Anna Snaith at King’s College London. The conference artwork was created by A T Kabe Wilson.

 Image credit (unless otherwise stated): Stuart Robinson, University of Sussex.