CFP BRN Bookselling Conference 2026: Spaces of Bookselling
Bangor University | 9–11 September 2026
In association with the Stephen Colclough Centre for the History and Culture of the Book
“For such a space entails the unexpected. The specifically spatial within time-space is produced by that—sometimes happenstance, sometimes not—arrangement-in-relation-to-each-other that results from the multiplicity of trajectories. In spatial configurations, otherwise unconnected narratives may be brought into contact, or previously connected ones may be wrenched apart. There is always an element of ‘chaos.’ This is the chance of space.”
— Doreen Massey, For Space (2005)
The BRN Conference 2026: Spaces of Bookselling invites papers exploring the multiplicity of trajectories within which bookselling operates—and which are, in turn, created by bookselling spaces.
Bookstores and bookselling sites are more than commercial environments: they are cultural, social, and imaginative spaces that shape and are shaped by the people, practices, and values that inhabit them. Doreen Massey’s description of “the chance of space” is echoed in Kristen Highland’s examination of how bookselling spaces “shape individual and collective behaviours and perceptions and are shaped by the values and practices of booksellers and book buyers” (Highland 2023). This bookstore space can outwit the curator, the corporate chain, the academic and the bookseller, creating unexpected opportunities for action and change. As such, the bookstore as a meaningful location has historically been a meeting place for debate, planning and for action. These are spaces that can provide what Kathy Liddle describes as “cultural interaction spaces”, where “a distributor, its cultural objects, and its audience converge” (Liddle 2018). Huw Osborne recognises their potential for disruption when he refers to them as counter-spaces that “hijack dominant spaces and repurpose them to leisure or liberating ones,” thereby “questioning or changing the nature of that dominant space” (Osborne 2015).
We welcome proposals that engage with all forms of the bookselling space—physical, virtual, historical, social, communal, commercial, and imagined—and encourage transcultural, transnational, and intersectional perspectives.
Possible topics for 20-minute papers include (but are not limited to):
- Bookstores (physical or virtual) as counter-spaces
- Structures that define bookselling spaces
- Networked bookselling spaces
- Gendered dimensions of bookselling
- Relationships between map and territory
- Expressions or senses of place
- Case studies of specific bookselling sites
- Affordances of bookselling space
- Bookselling in “spaces” vs “non-spaces”
- How bookselling spaces gather or connect communities
- The spatio-temporal nature of bookselling
- Historical transformations of bookselling spaces
- Informal spaces of bookselling and alternative routes of circulation
- Bookstores as community/gathering space
We also welcome creative and interdisciplinary engagements with the theme.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit:
- A 300-word proposal for a 20-minute paper
- A short biographical note
Deadline: 15 March 2026
Submit using this online form
All submissions will be responded to by 15 April.
For enquiries, please contact ****@*******ac.uk“>Eben Muse.
