Transdisciplinary approaches, industry partnerships, and grant opportunities: connecting literary studies

Australian Universities Heads of English is delighted to host the following transdisciplinary panel event. Please share with your networks, schools and faculties. 

Time: Jun 11, 2026 03:00 PM Brisbane

Join via zoom link: https://usc-au.zoom.us/j/81026932749

The exact nature of ARC is not yet clear for the immediate future. What is clear is that transdisciplinary, collaborative research and industry connections are an increasing focus across the research arena. Join us for this engaging online panel of experts on Thursday June 11 3pm

They will consider ideas such as:

• The opportunities and challenges  the push toward impact offers
• Partnerships that work, and how these are approached and built
• The most promising intersections between literary studies and non-academic sectors
• The role storytelling, narrative theory, and close reading might play in interdisciplinary research teams
• How literary scholars better communicate their value to non-academic partners
• Alternative funding models (philanthropy, industry sponsorship, crowdfunding, consultancy, creative practice income) are most viable for literary and related scholars
• And the role of universities in supporting literary studies

Our panel of experts are:

Chris Danta is professor of literature in the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and was recently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, 2021–25. His research operates at the intersection of literary theory, philosophy, science, and theology. He is currently working on a book titled Future Fables: Literature, Evolution, and Artificial Intelligence. 

Professor Donna Houston is a human geographer working at the intersection of urban and environmental change, using social and creative methods to address climate change and biodiversity loss. Her research advances multispecies and environmental justice, explores caring urbanisms, and examines extinction, ecological loss, and repair through storytelling and interdisciplinary collaborations. She is a member of the ARC College of Experts, Deputy Director (Urban Policy and Planning) in the Housing and Urban Research Centre at Macquarie University, and co-leads the international Shadow Places Network.

Emily Potter is Professor of Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University. She is a CI on two current ARC projects that involve community and industry collaborations and is co-convening a series of enrichment young adult book groups for the Victorian Department of Education (with Brigid Magner). 

………………………………………………

Call for Nominations for the 2026 AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship

The Australian Universities Heads of English (AUHE) is calling for nominations for the 2026 AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship, which will be awarded to the best single authored or co-authored monographs of literary scholarship published in the last two years. All forms of literary scholarship are acceptable, including critical, theoretical, empirical, historical, textual and so on. Interdisciplinary scholarship is not precluded though a work must engage with what is understood as books and writing in whatever form.

Nominated books need to have been published between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2026.

The prize is decided by a panel of members nominated by the AUHE executive. This year the panel members are: Ann Vickery, Margaret Henderson, and Dashiell Moore. The winner will be announced at the time of the AUHE AGM, usually in late November or early December.

Please forward all nominations to the Chair of the judging panel, Ann Vickery (ann.vickery@deakin.edu.au) by 5pm, 24 July 2026. Nominators should supply or ensure access to three copies of the nominated text. Either hard or electronic copies are acceptable, with electronic copies preferred. Authors may self-nominate. If nominating a book you have not authored, please contact the author of the text you are nominating to avoid duplicate entries. Publishers may also nominate books.

For any queries, please email the Chair of the judging panel.

The AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship now operates on an alternating cycle. The prize in 2026 is open to monographs; in 2027 the prize will be open to edited collections, scholarly editions, and all other non-monograph book-length works.

 ………………………………………………

HDR and ECR Book Proposal Workshop ASAL Conference

AUHE and ASAL are collaborating in hosting the HDR and ECR in person workshop at ASAL2026 Conference, UQ Brisbane: Optimising the potential for book publication with HDR and early career research

Monday June 29 9.30am to 10.30am 

Join Laura Jean McKay, Joseph Steinberg, Lee McGowan, Susan Lever, Meg Brayshaw and Clare Archer-Lean for a session on writing your first book proposal, followed by interactive workshop.

………………………………………………

Anatomophilia: reimagining the human body Research Innovations With Associate Professor Devaleena Das

Friday August 14  9am

Topic: AUHE Hosts Devaleena Das

Time: Aug 14, 2026 09:00 AM Brisbane

https://usc-au.zoom.us/j/85668833483

Devaleena Das is Associate Professor in Sexuality, the body and in University of Minnesota School of Medicine

Associate Professor Das will be sharing the findings of her new book Anatomophilia which reimagines the human body as a site of theory, relational care, ethics, and political knowledge rather than an inert object to be regulated, corrected, or erased. Drawing from South Asian, Indigenous, feminist, and queer philosophies of Kālī’s body, at once beautiful and abominable, wounded and regenerative, violated and resistant, Anatomophilia develops the theory of anatomophilia as a radical love and reverence for diverse anatomies. Moving across medical education and clinical encounters, embodied histories of migration, dance and performance, protest in the streets, visual art, and everyday bodily rituals, Devaleena Das argues that Global South bodies do not merely illustrate theory; they think, resist, and generate knowledge through touch, affect, grief, and resilience. Challenging disembodied and technocratic models of justice and care, she offers an ethically demanding framework for teaching, learning, and practicing medicine and care differently. Essential reading for scholars in health humanities and social sciences, clinicians, and students of feminist, queer, and justice studies, Anatomophilia speaks to urgent questions about embodiment, care, and what it means to live and love through the body.

Devaleena Das is Associate Professor of Body, Sexuality, and Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she teaches social and community health through feminist, Indigenous, and health equity frameworks. Her scholarship examines embodiment, epistemology, and knowledge production across clinical and sociopolitical contexts. She is the author and editor of six books, recipient of several national and international awards for her outstanding research, and  is the 2026 ACLS Fellow studying grief as feminist pedagogy in medical education.