ESSE POSITIONS: Call for applications and nominations for the position of PRESIDENT OF ESSE

The Nominations Committee seeks nominations for the position of President of ESSE, which falls vacant in January 2025. The usual term of office is three years. Candidates should be Professors of English with a distinguished scholarly career, and they should preferably have been involved in ESSE affairs. They need to obtain the written support from two national associations. Candidates should submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter of application
  • a short (2–3 page) CV
  • letters of support from two national associations.

Each national association can also nominate candidates for this position (only one candidate can be nominated by each national association). In this case, national associations will submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter, signed by the Association’s President, describing the candidate’s competence for the specific office
  • a short (2–3 page) CV of the candidate proposed
  • a letter, signed by another Association’s President, seconding this proposal
  • a letter in which the candidate will express his/her agreement with the candidacy.

Applications and nominations must be emailed by 30 April 2024 to all three members of the Nominations Committee:

Please use the following wording in the subject line:

ESSE: Nomination for President

From the applications and nominations received, the Committee will prepare a shortlist for the ESSE Board. Finalists will be interviewed (in person or online) and elected by a vote at the August 2024 board meeting.

ESSE POSITIONS: Call for applications and nominations for the position of EDITOR OF THE ESSE MESSENGER

The Nominations Committee seeks nominations for the position of Editor of The ESSE Messenger which falls vacant in January 2025. The usual term of office is three years. Candidates should preferably have been involved in ESSE affairs. They need to obtain the written support from two national associations. Candidates should submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter of application
  • a short (2–3 page) CV
  • letters of support from two national associations.

Each national association can also nominate candidates for this position (only one candidate can be nominated by each national association). In this case, national associations will submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter, signed by the Association’s President, describing the candidate’s competence for the specific office
  • a short (2–3 page) CV of the candidate proposed
  • a letter, signed by another Association’s President, seconding this proposal
  • a letter in which the candidate will express his/her agreement with the candidacy.

Applications and nominations must be emailed by 30 April 2024 to all three members of the Nominations Committee:

Please use the following wording in the subject line:

ESSE: Nomination for Editor of the ESSE Messenger

From the applications and nominations received, the Committee will prepare a shortlist for the ESSE Board. Finalists will be interviewed (in person or online) and elected by a vote at the August 2024 board meeting.

The death of Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

Queen Elizabeth II
(1926-2022)

The European Society for the Study of English mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth II, who died on September 8, 2022, aged 96. She was the longest serving monarch the United Kingdom has ever seen. Her death ended a rule of 70 years that saw 15 prime ministers from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson and, finally, to Liz Truss, whom she formally invited to become prime minster only two days before her death. Her son Charles succeeds her on the throne and will now be known as King Charles III. In a statement, he called the death of his mother “a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family,” adding that “her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.” ESSE is saddened by the news and wishes to express its deepest condolences to the Royal Family, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

2022 Book Awards Shortlists and Winners

ESSE Book Awards 2022

For books first published in 2020 and 2021 (date on imprint page of published book)

  • Category A is open for all books
  • Category B is for the first book only

ESSE Book Awards Ceremony

Monday, August 29, 2022, 14.00,  Mainz
ESSE-16 Conference opening 13.30

Shortlists

The lists below are in alphabetical order with the winners highlighted in bold. Details here .

1. English language and linguistics

Category A

  1. Calle-Martín, Javier. 2020. John Arderon’s De judiciis urinarum: A Middle English Commentary on Giles of Corbeil’s Carmen de urinis in Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 328 and Manchester University Library, MS Rylands Eng. 1310. Liverpool University Press.
  2. Perez-Llantada, Carmen. 2021. Research Genres across Languages. Cambridge University Press.
  3. Pilliere, Linda. 2021. Intralingual Translation of British Novels: A Multimodal Stylistic Perspective. Bloomsbury Academic.

Category B 

  1. Bouso, Tamara. 2021. Changes in argument structure. The transitivizing Reaction Object Construction. Peter Lang.
  2. Fernández-Pena, Yolanda. 2020. Reconciling Synchrony, Diachrony and Usage in Verb Number Agreement with Complex Collective Subjects. Routledge.
  3. Gandón-Chapela, Evelyn. 2020. On Invisible Language in Modern English: A Corpus-based Approach to Ellipsis. Bloomsbury Academic.

2. Literatures in the English language

Category A

  1. Haschemi Yekani, Elahe. 2021. Familial Feeling. Entangled Tonalities in Early Black Atlantic Writing and the Rise of the British Novel.  Palgrave Macmillan.
  2. Lynall, Gregory. 2020. Imagining Solar Energy. The Power of the Sun in Literature, Science and Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  3. Martínez García, Ana Belén. 2020. New Forms of Self Narration. Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan.
  4. Schwanebeck, Wieland. 2020. Literary Twinship from Shakespeare to the Age of Cloning. Routledge.
  5. Talairach, Laurence. 2021. Animals, Museum Culture and Children’s Literature in 19th century Britain. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Category B

  1. Dinter, Sandra. 2020. Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel. Routledge.
  2. Gebauer, Carolin. Making Time: World Construction in the Present-Tense Novel. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2021.
  3. Gill, Josie. 2020. Biofictions: Race, Genetics and the Contemporary Novel. Bloomsbury Academic. 
  4. John, Stefanie. 2021. Post-Romantic Aesthetics in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. ‎ Routledge.
  5. Pelayo Sañudo, Eva. 2021. Spatialities in Italian American Women’s Literature: Beyond the Mean Streets. ‎ Routledge.

3. Cultural and area studies in English

Category A 

  1. Borham-Puyal, Miriam. 2020. Contemporary Rewritings of Liminal Women. Echoes of the Past. Routledge.
  2. Katsarska, Milena. 2021. Parapositions: Prefacing American Literature in Bulgarian Translation 1948-1998. Plovdiv University Press.

Category B

  1. Bowers, Will. 2020. The Italian Idea: Anglo-Italian Radical Literary Culture, 1815–1823. Cambridge University Press.

New ESSE Jobs

New ESSE Messenger Editor

Starting from January 2022, The ESSE Messenger will have a new Editor. Her name is Dr. Laura Estaban Segura from the University of Malaga, Spain. Her email address as Editor is the known one, namely esse.messenger [at] uma.es.

New ESSE Webmaster

In parallel, the new ESSE Webmaster will be Dr. Adrian Radu (the former ESSE Messenger Editor) from Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania. His email address is essenglish.webmaster [at] gmail.com.

ESSE Positions of Secretary and Treasurer: Call for Applications and Nominations

The Nominations Committee of the ESSE Board seeks applications for the positions of Secretary and Treasurer, which fall vacant in January 2023. The usual term of office is three years. Candidates, who should preferably have been involved in ESSE affairs or have had similar positions in their national associations, should submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter of application
  • a short (2–3 page) CV
  • letters of support from two national associations.

Each national association can also nominate candidates for any of these two positions (only one candidate for each position). In this case, national associations will submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter, signed by the association’s President, describing the candidate’s competence for the specific office
  • a short (2–3 page) CV of candidate(s) proposed
  • a letter, signed by another association’s President, seconding this proposal
  • a letter in which the candidate will express his/her agreement with the candidacy.

Applications and nominations must be submitted electronically, by 30 April 2022 at the latest, to the members of the Nominations Committee:

From the applications and nominations received, the Committee will select the best candidates (maximum of three for each office). The two officers will be chosen by vote at the ESSE Board meeting in Mainz, 28–29 August 2022.

ESSE Research and Support

Here is the list of ESSE research support schemes for 2022:

Prof. Liliane Louvel will receive the Grand Prix d’Honneur of SAES

Professor Liliane Louvel, Professor emerita of literature in the English language at the University of Poitiers and former president of ESSE  between 2013-2018, will be awarded the “Grand Prix d’Honneur” on 10th of September. The prize will be awarded on behalf of SAES (the French national association associated with ESSE whose Honorary President Liliane Louvel is). This prize, which is awarded every four years, is a homage to a member of SAES for the totality of his or her exceptional contributions to English studies. Congratulations!

ESSE POSITIONS: Call for applications and nominations

For the position of PRESIDENT OF ESSE

The Nominations Committee seeks nominations for the position of President of ESSE, which falls vacant in January 2022. The usual term of office is three years. Candidates should be Professors of English with a distinguished scholarly career, and they should preferably have been involved in ESSE affairs. They need to obtain the written support from two national associations. Candidates should submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter of application
  • a short (2–3 page) CV
  • letters of support from two national associations.

Each national association can also nominate candidates for this position (only one candidate can be nominated by each national association). In this case, national associations will submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter, signed by the Association’s President, describing the candidate’s competence for the specific office
  • a short (2–3 page) CV of the candidate proposed
  • a letter, signed by another Association’s President, seconding this proposal
  • a letter in which the candidate will express his/her agreement with the candidacy.

Applications and nominations must be submitted electronically, by 30 April 2021 at the latest, to the members of the Nominations Committee:

From the applications and nominations received, the Committee will select the best candidates. They will be interviewed (in person or online) and elected by vote at the ESSE Board meeting in August 2021.

For the position of EDITOR OF THE ESSE MESSENGER

The Nominations Committee seeks nominations for the position of Editor of The ESSE Messenger which falls vacant in January 2022. The usual term of office is three years. Candidates should preferably have been involved in ESSE affairs. They need to obtain the written support from two national associations. Candidates should submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter of application
  • a short (2–3 page) CV
  • letters of support from two national associations.

Each national association can also nominate candidates for this position (only one candidate can be nominated by each national association). In this case, national associations will submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter, signed by the Association’s President, describing the candidate’s competence for the specific office
  • a short (2–3 page) CV of the candidate proposed
  • a letter, signed by another Association’s President, seconding this proposal
  • a letter in which the candidate will express his/her agreement with the candidacy.

Applications and nominations must be submitted electronically, by 30 April 2021 at the latest, to the members of the Nominations Committee:

From the applications and nominations received, the Committee will select the best candidates. They will be interviewed (in person or online) and elected by vote at the ESSE Board meeting in August 2021.

ESSE President

The ESSE Messenger Editor

Announcement of Doctoral Symposium

ESSE organizes an annual Doctoral Symposium, which continues a tradition dating from 2012 and is designed to provide a platform for young scholars to present their work and receive feedback. The Symposium is open without charge to PhD students who are writing their theses in English Studies and at the time of submitting their application are at least in the second year of work on their doctorate. To be eligible, either their supervisor or they themselves must be a member of an ESSE-affiliated Association (or, in relevant countries, of a Department that belongs to an ESSE member Association) at the moment of application. The next Symposium will be fully integrated into the (online) ESSE Conference and will take place, according to provisional planning, on 31 August and 1 September 2021. For further details, see: http://www.esse2020lyon.fr/en.

Participants will have an opportunity to make a brief presentation of their work in progress in one of three strands: English Language & Linguistics, Literatures in English, and Cultural & Area Studies. Their presentation should deal with the issues addressed or hypotheses tested in their doctoral research, the results so far obtained, and above all the methodology applied, with the purpose of gaining feedback from established scholars in the field and from their peers. Each presentation will last no longer than 10 minutes, followed by 15 minutes’ discussion. Participants are expected to attend all the presentations in their own strand and to take part in the discussions. There will also be extensive opportunities for informal contact with other participants and with the academics attending the ESSE Conference. Participation in the Doctoral Symposium does not exclude the possibility of taking part in one of the regular seminars in the Conference. No conference fee will apply to the participants in the Doctoral Symposium.

Applying to participate

Note that each PhD student can submit an application to only one strand of the Doctoral Symposium and should specify in the application which strand they wish to be placed in. Applications must include a letter from the student’s PhD supervisor giving the (provisional) title of the dissertation and confirming that the student is working under his/her supervision and has completed at least his/her first year of PhD studies. The Treasurer of ESSE will check the eligibility of all applicants and their supervisors.

The application should take the form of a summary of the project of no more than 300 words, indicating:

  • The main topic and issues, including the thesis proposed/hypothesis defended;
  • The methodology (theoretical tools and standpoints);
  • Where relevant, the corpus under consideration;
  • The results obtained so far.

Each strand of the Symposium will be coordinated by two experts (to be known as Convenors). They will make a selection from the applications received, chair the discussions and respond to the presentations.

Applications (including the letter from the applicant’s supervisor) should be sent, no later than 30 April 2021, to the Coordinator of the ESSE Doctoral Symposium, Professor J. Lachlan Mackenzie (VU Amsterdam, Netherlands) at lachlan_mackenzie@hotmail.com, to whom general enquiries can also be addressed. The eligibility check and the selection of submissions by the Convenors will be completed and announced by 21 May 2021.

ESSE 15 Conference, Lyon (France) postponed to 2021

In view of the current situation, the organizing committee and the ESSE Executive have jointly acknowledged that the 2020 conference cannot be held on 31 August / 4 September. All events are cancelled, except for the doctoral symposium and the annual board meeting, which will take place online. Board members and participants of the doctoral symposium will be notified about the details in due course.

We are provisionally planning to reschedule the event on 30 August / 3 September 2021 with a minimal number of adjustments. In spite of the many uncertainties ahead of us all, we remain hopeful that the conference can go ahead in 2021. A new situation update will be circulated in due course after the summer.

Details here: http://www.esse2020lyon.fr/en

ESSE 2020 Conference (Lyon, France) – Update

As a reaction to the current uncertainties, the ESSE Executive and the Organizing Committee of the Lyon Conference had an emergency meeting (via Skype) on March 19. The preparations are well under way and on schedule, and we all hope and trust that the conference will take place as planned at the end of August/beginning of September. However, in view of the uncertainties it was decided that the opening of the registration procedure will be postponed for the time being. A new situation update will be posted on April 30. The dates for early bird registrations will be reassessed and possibly adjusted depending on the time when registration can be opened. We very much hope that the situation will be clearer by the end of April and will inform accordingly. In the meantime, keep safe and stay healthy.

Details here: http://www.esse2020lyon.fr/en/pages/esse-2020-home

ESSE Book Awards 2020 – For books first published in 2018 and 2019

ESSE Book Award (Category A):  A book prize of €1,500 will be awarded by ESSE in 2020, coinciding with the 15th Conference to be held in Lyon, France, for books first published in 2018 or 2019 in each of the following fields:

  1. English language and linguistics
  2. Literatures in the English language
  3. Cultural and area studies in English

ESSE Book Award for Junior Scholars (Category B): A further book prize of €1,500 will be awarded by ESSE in 2020 to a junior scholar for a first research book published in English in each of the three fields mentioned above, provided that publication was in 2018 or 2019.

The deadline for submission of books is 1 February 2020. The winners will be announced on the occasion of ESSE-15 in Lyon, France.

The requirements are as follows:

  • Books eligible for prizes will be those published in English; they must have an ISBN. PhD dissertations published in book format, with an ISBN, are accepted. Editions of collected essays will NOT qualify for these prizes. The books must be works of scholarly research in the field of English studies. Undergraduate textbooks will not be considered.
  • Any number of books may be submitted by the same author (provided that they are published within the admitted period of time), except for category B, since junior scholars are expected to submit their first research book published in English.
  • All books will be evaluated strictly on the basis of their academic value, without regard to publisher, country of publication or nationality of the author.
  • Authors must be members of national associations affiliated to ESSE (according to the official membership list submitted in 2019).
  • Three copies (printed or electronic format) must be provided of each book submitted for consideration. No book will be considered for an award unless three copies have been received. The copies will not be returned.
  • Candidates must write an email to the President of ESSE, Prof. Andreas H Jucker esse.president@outlook.com, informing him of their intention to participate, declaring their affiliation to a national association which is a member of ESSE, giving their university address, mentioning the field to which their book belongs, and indicating whether the copies of the book will be sent by the author or by the publisher. Candidates for the Category B award must also include a brief CV which must contain at least their date of birth, university affiliation, main field(s) of research and previous publications.

The three review copies must be sent to the address below by 1 FEBRUARY 2020. The deadline must be observed.

Books must be sent to the following address:

President of ESSE          
Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Jucker
Department of English
University of Zurich
Plattenstrasse 47
CH-8032 Zurich

The selection committees (three members each) will be appointed by the Board of ESSE in each of the three fields and for the two categories named above. Their composition will not be made public. Board members shall not pass on any information concerning this matter to the members of their associations. The Executive of ESSE will replace any members who are unable to carry out their duties. The Chairs of the selection committees will report progress regularly to the President of ESSE. The members of the committees can be Board members or ESSE members invited by the Board to do the selection job. The members of the committees and the ESSE Board are excluded from submitting their own books.

Two months before the opening of the conference a shortlist of a maximum of five books in each field and category will be announced on the ESSE Website. Board members are asked to report to the President any misgivings that they may have about the propriety of awarding a prize to any book on the shortlist, with the President passing on such comments to the committees if he deems it appropriate. The committees will recommend the awards to the Board, or they may recommend that no award be made in a particular field. Each committee can also recommend the conferment of one honourable mention. The President will report to the Board whether the work of the committees has been satisfactorily conducted. The Board may then approve the recommendations of the committees or they may reject a recommendation, in which case no award will be given in that field or category. Winners will be informed immediately in confidence, and the awards will be publicly announced during the opening ceremony of ESSE-15 conference, in Lyon, France

Most important decisions taken by the Board (Wroclaw, Poland, 29 – 30 August 2019)

  1. The Board of ESSE unanimously agreed to have only one date for membership updates per calendar year. Fees will be collected according to the membership lists sent to ESSE Treasurer by 15 November of the current year. Members whose names are included in these lists will be able to claim ESSE privileges the following year, such as ESSE Bursaries, ESSE Book grants, ESSE Book awards, conference fee waivers and the Collaborative Project Workshop Schemes. The only exception will be the ESSE Doctoral Symposium, whose requirements for both, taking part and applying for a grant remain unchanged.
  2. The Board of ESSE unanimously accepted a new member association. This is the Montenegrin Society for the Study of English (MONTESSE).
  3. The Board of ESSE agreed to the theme of the forthcoming winter volume (December 2019) of The ESSE Messenger. The topic will be “The book-to-film debate in the age of visual commodities”. The planned theme for the summer volume (July 2020) is “Language, discourse and gender identity”.
  4. The Board of ESSE appointed the evaluation committees for the ESSE Book Awards in 2020.
  5. The Board of ESSE accepted the proposed parallel lectures, seminars and round tables for ESSE-15 conference in Lyon in 2020. The call for papers will soon be published on the ESSE website.
  6. The Board of ESSE strongly reaffirmed its commitment to promote research and support activities destined to help young and established researchers. The Board decided to:
  • continue with the Bursaries, and appointed a Bursary committee for 2020. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1 March 2020;
  • continue with the Book grants. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1 May 2020;
  • continue with the Doctoral Symposium in conference and non-conference years, as well as to offer funding of up to €5,000 to help eligible doctoral students in need of support to participate in the Doctoral Symposium that will be held in Lyon, France, during ESSE-15 conference. The announcement will soon be published on the ESSE website;
  • continue the Collaborative Project Workshop Scheme, whose purpose is to support a preliminary meeting of European researchers working towards a collaborative research project in the field of English Studies.

Call for applications and nominations for the ESSE positions of secretary and treasurer

The Nominations Committee of the ESSE Board seeks applications for the positions of Secretary and Treasurer, which fall vacant in January 2020. The usual term of office is three years. Candidates, who should preferably have been involved in ESSE affairs or have had similar positions in their national associations, should submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter of application
  • a short (2–3 page) CV
  • letters of support from two national associations.

Each national association can also nominate candidates for any of these two positions (only one candidate for each position). In this case, national associations will submit, as e–mail attachments:

  • a letter, signed by the association’s President, describing the candidate’s competence for the specific office
  • a short (2–3 page) CV of candidate(s) proposed
  • a letter, signed by another association’s President, seconding this proposal
  • a letter in which the candidate will express his/her agreement with the candidacy.

Applications and nominations must be submitted electronically, by 30 April 2019 at the latest, to the members of the Nominations Committee:

From the applications and nominations received, the Committee will select the best candidates (maximum of three for each office). The two officers will be chosen by vote at the ESSE Board meeting in Wroclaw, 29–30 August 2019.

 ESSE Secretary and ESSE Treasurer 2019

The ESSE Collaborative Project Workshop Scheme

Developing Mediation Skills for Teaching Legal English

By Patrizia Anesa & Barbora Chovancova

 4-5 October, 2018
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de Sistemas Informáticos, MADRID

Picture Gallery

The project proposal was presented by Patrizia Anesa (University of Bergamo, Italy) and Barbora Chovancová (Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic). Members of the project are: Ismael Arinas Pellon (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain), Shona Whyte (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France) and Halina Sierocka (University of Białystok, Poland).

 The workshop gave the participants the chance to discuss the project proposal and offer a definition of the first operational steps. Some of the sessions were also open to members of the Comm&Learn Research Team based at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (in particular Carola Álvarez-Bolado Sánchez, José Luis Llavona Arregui, Luis Dochao Moreno, and Éva Jakusné Harnos). The workshop also allowed us to discuss future strategies and potential forms of cooperation, as well as to share ideas about how project findings can be presented and circulated to colleagues internationally.

The term mediation can denote both a tool to reach a consensus in ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) and a language skill which enables communication over a linguistic barrier. The project intends to address both aspects. It also aims at defining good practices in the field of mediation to be developed for the legal profession, identifying educational needs and gaps in the area (emerging across different countries), and producing flexible programmes for legal English in a globalized, fast evolving legal world. The approach is not limited to linguistic features but will be contextualised by information offered by practitioners and teacher educators.

The complexity of mediation dynamics encompasses phenomena such as the popularization of information and its recontexualization, especially in teaching and training contexts. Thus, mediation will also be observed from a communicative perspective as a skill which has been relatively overlooked in ESP teaching (Chovancova 2016). The project will investigate practices which can be implemented in the teaching of Legal English in light of the importance of such discursive practices in making informed decisions. Thus, the analysis also aims to evaluate to what extent mediation may be defined as a crucial skill in legal language instruction and teacher education, and will provide practical applications of the integration of mediation into the legal English syllabus. In particular, legal language learning is inherently linked to content construction in Content-Based Instruction (CBI) and English Medium Instruction (EMI). Thus, a syllabus focusing on technical mediation material, interactive teamwork, and communication skills is crucial for efficient teaching and learning. Practical examples of qualitative and quantitative results from courses involving different types of technology-mediated teaching and learning in different universities will also be considered.

The overall objective is thus to offer insights into ways of enhancing and modernizing legal English teaching and learning by taking into account skills which are often ignored in traditional materials, but which in turn represent essential abilities in specific professional contexts.

This workshop represented a great opportunity to discuss the strengths and weakness of the project and exchange ideas with other experts in the field. We would like to express our gratitude to ESSE, which supported it and made it possible.

ESSE Collaborative Project Workshop Scheme for 2019

The ESSE Collaborative Project Workshop Scheme offers seed funding of up to 8,000 Euro to support a preliminary meeting of European researchers working towards a collaborative research project in the field of English Studies. The main purpose of this grant is to encourage prospective co-researchers from different national associations to plan a bid for a larger award from alternative funding sources; it also aims to resource the time and space to work out practical and intellectual details of the proposed project. Applications will be assessed on the quality and originality of research, evidence of sustainable international collaboration, and the feasibility of the project and its development.

  • The proposed workshop should be designed to explore a collaborative research project that falls within the subject area of ESSE. The main purpose of the workshop should be to plan or facilitate grant writing for a larger award, although other activities connected to the development of the project may be involved.
  • Applications should be submitted jointly by two full ESSE members from two different national associations.
  • Other participants in the proposed workshop may be drawn from the same institutions or associations, but international diversity and collaboration across associations will be one of the criteria for assessing applications. Proposals can include postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers. Any participants who are not members of their national associations will be expected to join where possible following a successful application.
  • The ESSE Board members are excluded from proposing or taking part in the workshop.
  • The grant will only fund workshops of the type described above; it does not support other types of events, such as conferences, symposia, colloquia, seminar series or guest lectures.
  • The grant may be used for reasonable expenses only: these include travel, accommodation and subsistence. Costs of meeting room bookings should be met by the hosting institution.
  • The grant is designed to support a two-day meeting, and budgets should be designed to reflect this structure unless there is good reason for an alternative.
  • The grant will be of a maximum of 4,000 euro per application.
  • Successful applicants are expected to submit a full financial report with a detailed overview of expenses, including receipts and invoices. They will also be required to report back to ESSE on how the workshop objectives have been achieved and what plans are in place for the follow-up bid. Workshop participants may also like to write up their meeting for the ESSE Messenger.
  • Successful applicants should acknowledge support received from ESSE in subsequent publications or publicity for the project. The ESSE logo should be included where appropriate in printed or electronic materials related to the project.

Applications should include the following:

  1. Workshop participant details: name, affiliation, position and email address for all participants, and indication of their contribution to the project (maximum 150 words for each participant)
  2. Project topic: outline of the proposed project with research questions and brief bibliography (maximum 1,000 words)
  3. Funding plans: details of funding body, scheme and amount of award to be applied for, where possible.
  4. Workshop details: breakdown of date, venue and costs for workshop (download the budget guideline)
  5. Rationale: a statement explaining the urgency/value/originality of the project and the key objectives of the workshop (maximum 500 words)
  6. Applications should be sent to Rainer Emig emigr@uni-mainz.de

 Dates

  • Deadline for applications: 31 March 2019
  • Notification of results will be sent to applicants by 8 May 2019
  • Deadline for completing the workshop and submission of workshop reports: 30 November 2019

 

ESSE Book Grants for 2019

Recognising that it is difficult in some situations to obtain access to books necessary for research without purchasing them, and recognising also that some ESSE members have financial difficulties, ESSE awards some small grants to its members for the purchase of books in connection with specific research projects.

Grants will be of a maximum of 300 euro per applicant. However, applications will be kept to the minimum necessary and restricted only to books that fulfil the following criteria:

  • Books that are not held by the applicant’s university libraries and cannot easily and quickly be obtained by interlibrary loan.
  • Books that need to be available to the applicants over an extended period, longer than would be possible through a library loan.
  • Books whose price would place a strain on the applicant’s available financial resources, for example, because of the high cost of the books concerned.

ESSE requests that successful applicants donate the books to their university libraries when their research projects have been completed, so that other scholars can benefit from the books.

Eligibility

  • Applicants for book grants must themselves be members of their national associations affiliated to ESSE, with the exception of PhD students from the Serbian Association for the Study of English, which does not consider doctoral students eligible as members; in this case, their supervisor must be a member of an association affiliated to ESSE.
  • Grants are available for any research project, whether it is formally registered and recognised or simply normal individual academic research. However, it is not the intention to provide books for general academic purposes, e.g. as reference works to have on one’s bookshelf.

Dates

The application deadline is 1 May 2019. Applications will be dealt with as quickly as possible.

Books included in the application must be bought at the personal expense of the applicant between the application deadline and 30 June 2019.

After purchasing the books, the winners will send the itemised receipts to the Treasurer of ESSE, Alberto Lázaro (alberto.lazaro@uah.es). The receipt(s) will include the name of the purchaser, the titles and the cost of the books (even if the purchases are electronic).

Grant money will be transferred to recipients’ accounts before 15 July 2019.

Selection Committee

 ESSE Book Grants Announcement Application Form

ESSE Bursaries for 2019

In 2019, ESSE will offer funding of up to €19,000 to help cover costs associated with a research trip.

ESSE will again offer TWO types of travel bursaries:

  1. Type A: a number of bursaries of up to €1,500 each will be available for scholars in need of support to pursue a project or programme of research leading to the writing of their PhD dissertation.
  2. Type B: a number of bursaries of up to €1,500 each will be available for scholars already holding a doctorate or its equivalent.

Applications are invited from all member countries. Awards are made on the basis of academic merit.

Only one application per person is allowed.

Bursaries may not be used to support research trips begun before the Bursary Committee has announced the outcome of the competition.

Applications for Type A and Type B Bursaries will not normally be entertained from candidates who have previously been successful in that competition.

In the case of both competitions A and B, winners are expected to make a short-term visit to a country where they, for example, identify an outstanding holding, collection or other type of material relevant to their research, or where they gather corpus materials or conduct an experiment. Conference participation is not supported by these bursaries; award winners may extend their visit at their own expense to attend a conference in the country concerned, but no part of the conference expenses will be covered by the bursary. Bursaries must be utilized and the study trips completed by the application deadline for next year’s bursaries, i.e. 1 March 2020.

After completing the research trip, winners will be asked to send a financial report to the Treasurer of ESSE and a report about their results to both the Treasurer and the Chair of the Selection Committee. This latter report may be published in ESSE Messenger.

Applicants for the first type of bursary are required to be members of their national associations affiliated to ESSE with the exception of the Serbian Association for the Study of English which does not consider PhD students eligible as members; in this case, their supervisors must be ESSE members.

Applicants for the second type of bursaries must be registered members of their national associations affiliated to ESSE for at least one year (membership starting on 1 January of the previous year – this is to say, January 2018).

The deadline for applications for both types of Bursaries is 1 March 2019.

Notification to the applicants should be sent (electronically) by 15 April 2019. Applicants should send electronically to the chair of the Selection Committee:

  • the completed application form (see below) with sections on personal information, a list of the applicant’s most important publications, a research plan, and a provisional budget proposal;
  • a scanned or electronically generated letter issued by the president or the secretary of the appropriate national organization to certify the membership of the applicant (or his/her supervisor in Serbia);
  • for Type A bursaries, a letter of recommendation, sent directly via email to the Chair of the Selection Committee by the supervisor of the PhD candidate.

Note: the names of the bursary winners and their projects will be published on the ESSE website.

Selection Committee:

 Bursaries 2019 Announcement Application Form