Fantasy's Present Past Conference
General Information
Fantasy's Present Pasts, the first European Conference on the Fantastic, will take place at the University of Glasgow from Tuesday 23rd June to Thursday 25th June 2026.
The conference invited innovative papers that explore works of Fantasy or consider genre culture more broadly, focusing particularly on the ways in which speculative genres engage with the interplay of past and present. Its programme considers the kinds of history on which works of Fantasy currently draw; the ways in which pasts present themselves in genre texts; and the manners in which we currently model the diverse pasts of genres across different cultures and traditions. As the inaugural conference in a new series, it hopes to take stock of where we are in genre studies and collaboratively to think through where we would like to get to.
The conference programme includes over 150 papers; a series of workshops; three keynotes from leading scholars (see below for further details); and drinks receptions and social events on the Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
The Fantasy's Present Pasts - Outline Programme (April 2026) and the Fantasy's Present Pasts - Detailed Programme (May 2026) are now available, although these remain subject to minor changes.
Registration is open through Eventbrite until Sunday 14th June.
A limited amount of student accommodation is available for conference delegates in Cairncross House, which is 15-20 minutes on foot from the conference venues; this includes single rooms at £39.50 a night and double-occupancy twin rooms at £52 per night. Student accommodation can be booked using this link. To access the conference allocation, select dates between 22nd June and 26th June and enter the promotion code FPP2026.
If you have questions about the conference, we can be reached on arts-fantasy@glasgow.ac.uk.
Plenary Speakers
Helen Young is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia and a current Australian Research Council Future Fellow leading the project 'The Politics of Medievalism: Persuasive Narratives'. Helen’s research interests include histories of race and racism, cultures of violent extremism, and popular culture – particularly the Fantasy genre.
Sofia Samatar is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel A Stranger in Olondria, which won the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and was included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. Samatar also received the 2014 Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Her most recent work of speculative fiction is the novella The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, winner of a Silver Nautilus Award and a finalist for the Philip K. Dick, Locus, Nommo, Hugo, and Nebula Awards. Samatar is an associate professor of English at James Madison University in Virginia, where she teaches African literature, Arabic literature, and speculative fiction.
Stefan Ekman holds a PhD in English Literature from Lund University and is currently affiliated with Karlstad University and the Research Group for Culture Studies (KuFo) there. He has published extensively on critical world-building in fantasy, fantasy maps, and social commentary in urban fantasy, including two books: Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Landscapes (Wesleyan UP, 2013) and Urban Fantasy: Exploring Modernity through Magic (Lever Press, 2024). The urban fantasy book won the 2025 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth and Fantasy Studies and is available with open access. His most recent publication is “Where Be Witches? The Role of Adventure Maps in Building a Game World” (in Navigating Imaginary Worlds: Wayfinding and Subcreation, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf, Routledge 2025).
Ekman is a previous division head for fantasy literature at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts and a founding member of the Swedish Network for Speculative Fiction. He has run the fortnightly Fantasy Online Research Seminar since 2022.