Major publishing conference comes to Reading

The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) and the University of Reading are delighted to host the SHARP 2024 conference on Whiteknights campus from 1-5 July.

SHARP 2024, “Global Book Cultures: Materialities, Collaborations, Access”, will explore how books and texts are produced, distributed, and read in global contexts today and in the past.

The conference will address how access to the publishing industry is uneven on many different levels and interrogate how book cultures across time can and have been used to resist, question, or otherwise support or reinstate various systems of power and/or oppression.

Sessions will cover a broad range of topics including women in publishing, alternative publishing cultures, the politics of reading, translation and inclusion, and access and accessibility in the digital age.

Daniela La Penna, Professor of Modern Italian Culture and one of CBCP’s Directors said: “We are delighted to welcome over 300 delegates from all over the world to the University of Reading. We will be hosting major and world-leading scholars as well as emerging early career scholars in the field of publishing history, book histories, social histories of the book, and history of graphic design. We are honoured to host this year’s SHARP conference and look forward to sharing state of the art thinking on global and globalised book cultures.”

The University’s renowned collections in book, printing and publishing history, and facilities and technical expertise to explore the making of type and printing processes, will underpin conference events. The University is home to The Archive of British Publishing and Printing, Writers’ and Artists Papers and Lettering, Printing and Graphic Design Collections.

Delegates will be able to attend sessions using the University’s collections and archives, and about projects that inform collections upkeep and usage. Delegates will also have opportunity to view a new research and teaching workshop comprising a unique range of historic and reconstructed printing presses.

Established in 1992, SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) is a global scholarly society dedicated to the appreciation, development, and challenges of the social roles of print and other forms of communication throughout history and into the future. Each year SHARP holds a locally-run annual conference that brings scholars together for stimulating discussions of vast range of issues related to the history of authorship, reading and publishing.

The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Reading that undertakes research in book cultures and publishing with a distinctive global, multilingual and multidisciplinary focus.