September Conference to Ponder the Work of Terry Pratchett
The Pratchett Project is a collaborative team of researchers from Trinity College Dublin, Senate House Library (University of London), and Liverpool University which since 2018 has been studying the life and work of writer Sir Terry Pratchett (1948-2015), author most famously of the Discworld series of humorous fantasy novels and also adjunct professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin.
Registration is now open for the inaugural Pratchett Project Conference 2020, originally intended to be a ‘normal’ conference but which has nimbly leapt online. Attendance at the two-day event on September 17 and 18 is free, though donations are welcome and will go towards research into Alzheimer’s Disease from which Pratchett suffered.
The scope of the research is wide – taking in neuroscience, translation studies, and cartography – and the organizers of the conference hope it will lead to the beginning of a new interdisciplinary and collaborative field of Pratchett Studies.
Split into four sections over the two days, the conference will focus on The Space of Ideas, Translation and Humour, Ethics and Identity, and Research and Teaching. Scheduled sessions include The Big Wahoonie: Ankh-Morpork as Cross-Media Urban Imaginary; Translating Pratchett into Ukrainian: Strategies and Challenges; The Move from Fantasy Parody to Moral Complexity and Literary Fiction in the Ankh Morpork-novels; and 'Lies to children': From folk to formal science in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
More details are available in the conference booklet and signing up details are available at Eventbrite.
