Abstracts, of c. 200 words, are invited from current postgraduate students working on topics related to the focus of the Trinity Centre for the Book, who wish to participate in the Centre’s Postgraduate Showcase on 29 April 2026.

The Showcase forms the End of Term slot in the Trinity Centre for the Book’s monthly seminar
series, which meets on the last Wednesday in every month, between 5pm and 6pm, in the Neill
Lecture Theatre in the Long Room Hub. It is envisaged the Showcase will comprise FOUR ten-minute papers, with the remaining time for questions to all of the speakers. The aim is to give postgraduates a chance to present their work to an interdisciplinary audience, and to emphasise the diversity and depth of research related to book history being conducted in Trinity.

The Trinity Centre for the Book is the first research centre devoted to writing, reading and book use on the island of Ireland, and acts in close collaboration with its main partners, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, and the TCD Library, which via the digitisation initiatives that are part of Trinity Virtual Library and the Old Library Redevelopment, is consolidating its status as a beacon of international best practice in Special Collections management. The Centre combines a focus on historical questions around the origins and development of writing systems, literatures and literary cultures, with research on issues related to textuality in society like literacy, reading and wellbeing, and policy issues around maximising access to Ireland’s written cultural heritage.

Indicative themes for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:

  • The History of Writing: the development of writing systems; of writing technologies and
    associated material forms of textuality like inscriptions, graffiti, manuscripts, documents,
    rolls, incunabula, printed books, and emergent forms of textuality like e-books, e-journals
    and emails; and of literacies, literate cultures, literatures, and literary cultures; philology as
    ‘the science of texts’ and other qualitative and quantitative approaches to text.
  • Text and Image: manuscript illumination, illustrations, woodcuts, cover art, author images,
    accessibility and alt-text for images in digital content; the relationship between written and
    visual communication; text as image.
  • Writing in Society: writing and the brain; writing and speech; literacy, linguistic landscapes,
    literate and literary networks; inclusion and access to written culture.
  • Sharing the Book: approaches to the conservation, preservation and archiving of text, and
    facilitation of public access to textual heritage; digitisation.


Abstracts of c. 200 words should be submitted to volmern@tcd.ie by 5pm on 20 February with TCB Showcase in the subject header.