Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
June 26^th – 27^th 2025

For much of the past five hundred years, ghosts have dominated the supernatural landscape. The ways in which the dead have been perceived by the living has changed significantly over time, both in terms of their various guises and the contexts in which they appear. But despite this, and the potential ghosts have to shed light on key historical moments, they still remain understudied. While ghosts have attracted considerable attention within cultural, critical, and literary studies, it is only recently that ghosts have started to be studied for what they can tell us about religious, social, gendered, spatial or emotional dynamics. Older studies have often been dominated by folklorists, or have centred on the medieval period. Much recent scholarship has focused on the modern world, or on the ghost and ‘hauntedness’ as theoretical constructs, or rhetorical or narrative devices.

This two-day conference seeks to explore representations of the revenant dead in historical context. Through taking a broad chronological scope it hopes to shed light on how representations of ghosts changed over time, and how they can illuminate specific historical moments. It aims to place ghost beliefs and accounts of sightings of or engagements with the dead within their historical context and to consider how these stories were shaped by ideas about religion, community, neighbourhood, gender, space and place, emotion, and the supernatural more broadly. We are especially interested in work which takes a historical perspective, regardless of the researcher’s discipline.  

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

Spatial dynamics	Collecting ghosts
Emotional resonances	Specific case studies
Materialities and immaterialities	Medical and scientific and pseudoscientific explanations
Gendered dynamics	Changing understandings over time
Defining the ghost	Religious impacts
Notions of class	Narrative strategies
Conflict and change

The organisers – Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar (Melbourne), Dr Andrew Sneddon (Ulster) and Dr Clodagh Tait (Mary Immaculate) – aim to publish a special issue out of the conference.

Proposals for 20 minute papers or for full panels should be submitted to ghostconference2025@gmail.com by January 10^th. Abstracts should be between 150-200 words. We also ask authors to submit a brief bio of 2 or 3 sentences. We aim to communicate decisions by February.

Please note that this is an in-person conference and virtual papers will unfortunately not be possible.