The world around us is constantly changing, and we must respond to these changes, as they are often a direct result of our own actions. Phenomena such as climate change, geopolitical conflicts, rapid development of technology, and rise of pseudoscience have become indelible elements of daily life; consequently, it is essential that people adapt to new realities. Language, culture, literature, and the new media can reflect, or simply constitute a human response to changes. For instance, posthumanism stems from the need to depart from the 17th-century humanist model. According to Neill Badmington, posthumanism ‘considers the possibility that (…) advances in technology or discoveries about animals are leading to fundamental changes in the human species and its relationship with the world’ (The Encyclopaedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, 1212). Just as posthumanism developed as a response to a specific change, postcolonialism, modernism, and feminism, among others, have taken similar trajectories.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, we would like to encourage young researchers to share their thoughts, observations, and ideas that concern themes of adapting and innovating in response to global changes.

Suggested themes may include:

• • Environmental criticism – how climate change and its consequences are represented in media, language and culture;
• • Power, control and rebellion – language, culture and media as both tools of oppression and means of opposing it;
• • Pre-traumatic stress disorder;
• • Posthumanism and transhumanism – how advancements in research and technology shape the perception of a human being;
• • Modernism, postmodernism, post-postmodernisms;
• • Postcolonialism and neocolonialism; decolonisation;
• • Rebellion against societal, cultural, gender, and other norms;
• • Transformation in vocabulary and terminology due to cultural changes (e.g. pejorative words and negative connotations)
• • Censorship and so-called “political correctness” (responses to racism, ageism, ableism, gender discrimination).

Please send your conference paper proposals (max. 250 words) accompanied by a short bio (max. 150 words) to currentsconference2025.umk@gmail.com by 25 April 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 7 May 2025. For more information please consult the conference website: https://adaptationinnovation25umk.wordpress.com/

The conference will take place online and is free to all participants. We invite young researchers at all stages of their academic careers: BA, MA and doctoral students with interest in English studies. &

Simultaneously, we plan to devote this year’s issue of Currents: A Journal of Young English Philology Thought and Review to the conference theme. Therefore, we announce a call for articles on adaptation and innovation within Anglophone language, culture and literature to be published in the 11th volume of Currents, an open access, peer-reviewed journal, which provides a thought-sharing platform for early career researchers.

We also invite submissions to the review section. Reviews should preferably be devoted to publications relevant to the theme of the current issue and related to recent research in the field of English studies.

Articles accompanied by abstracts of 200-300 words and a short biographical note about the author (50-100 words) or reviews should be submitted to currentsjournalumk@gmail.com by 15th of June 2025.

Suggested article length: 3,500—5,000 words.

Suggested review length: ca. 1500 words.

For author’s guidelines see “Instructions for authors”: Instructions

Note: You are welcome to submit your proposals for both the conference and the publication or for either of these projects.

View the CFP as a pdf file

The organising committee:

Joanna Porębska

Zuzanna Sanecka

Katarzyna Przygońska

Michalina Dąbrowska

Aleś Makkaveyeu

Julia Jasińska

Edyta Lorek-Jezińska, PhD, NCU Prof.

Nelly Strehlau, PhD

Agata Rupińska, MA