Modality, Mutability, and Mobility: Currents of Change in Translation and Interpreting on November 13-14, 2025 in Coventry, United Kingdom

IPCITI 2025 — Modality, Mutability, and Mobility: Currents of Change in Translation and Interpreting

In an era characterised by rapid advances in media and technology, intensifying cross-cultural interactions that shape our languages and identities, the transformative influences of AI, multimodality, and intermediality on our understanding of meanings and forms, as well as emerging challenges in global social, political and ecological contexts, the theme of this year’s conference will be ‘Modality, Mutability, and Mobility’.

Modality examines the various modes through which translation and interpreting manifest, from traditional textual practices to multimodal, intermedial processes and products. Mutability considers the shifts among these modes and the emergence of alternative ways of producing meaning, responding to external challenges, and navigating new cultural and technological terrain. It also reflects the evolving interdisciplinary methodologies and conceptual frameworks that underpin the fields. Mobility explores the transcultural, transnational, and transtemporal movements of knowledge, ideas, ideologies, theories, experiences, and memories facilitated by translation, interpreting, translators, and interpreters. Together, these dimensions highlight the dynamic, negotiated nature of translation and interpreting as practices deeply embedded in wider socio-political and cultural processes.

The International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting, or IPCITI, is a student-led conference that rotates between four universities with a strong focus on translation and interpreting: Dublin City University, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Manchester, and the University of Warwick. IPCITI provides an inviting, collaborative, and stimulating space for PhD and early-career researchers in translation and interpreting studies to share their research and engage in meaningful dialogue.

The conference will be held in person at the University of Warwick this year on 13-14 November 2025, offering time for informal discussions, networking, and in-depth exploration of current research across the field of translation and interpreting.

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions that interrogate how translation and interpreting practices adapt across modes, contexts, and communities — especially under conditions of displacement, dis/ability, and environmental precarity in a world marked by shifting discourses, cultural negotiations, and the interplay of material and symbolic practices.

We particularly invite proposals that engage with translation not only as a linguistic act, but as a site of ideological negotiation, textual rewriting, and cultural intervention. The theme encourages reflection on how translation operates across institutions and power structures, its role in constructing or challenging canons, and its capacity to mediate memory, identity, and authority across times and spaces.

We are also interested in work that explores translation across multimodal and cross-media environments—from audiovisual content, digital platforms, and social media to art, performance, and interactive storytelling, highlighting the increasingly hybrid and layered nature of translation in contemporary contexts.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• AI, machine translation, and epistemic shifts
• Audiovisual translation and localisation
• Eco-translation and environmental ethics
• Fan translation, participatory media, and digital culture
• Feminist, Queer, Postcolonial, and Decolonial approaches to translation and interpreting
• Institutional mediation, cultural adaptation, and shifting narratives and identity
• Inter-semiotic and multimodal translation
• Retranslation, adaptation, and re-contextualisation
• Translation and interpreting in migration, crisis, and humanitarian contexts
• Translation, memory, and ideological transfer

We encourage submissions from researchers, translators, interpreters, artists, and interdisciplinary practitioners. Submissions are to be written in English.

Please submit your abstract by 25 July using this form. Visit our website for more information https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/news/events/ipciti2025/.