The ESTS is happy to announce a new issue of Variants, the peer-reviewed journal of The European Society for Textual Scholarship, published in Open Access via the OpenEdition platform at https://journals.openedition.org/variants. The theme of this issue, edited by Wout Dillen, Elsa Pereira, and Stefano Rosignoli, is “Authors and their Drafts in Context”. Unlike previous themed issues in our series, this title does not repeat the theme of a specific past ESTS conference that set the issue in motion and determined its call for papers. Instead, we picked this title because different combinations of “authors”, “drafts”, and their “contexts” appear in each of the essays, and because the title combines elements of the themes of two conferences that are featured in the current issue: ESTS 2023 (Canterbury, UK) and GENESIS 2023 (Taipei, Taiwan). For more context regarding the composition and publication of this issue, please refer to the Editors’ Preface.
We hope that you enjoy the contributions carefully compiled here and look forward to the publication of Variants 20, which we are preparing for publication in 2026 as we speak.
Call for Papers: STS 2026
Venue: The New School, New York City
Dates: 3-5 June 2026
Materiality, Memory, Forgetting: Cross-currents in Textual Studies and Memory Studies
Abstract submission deadline: 1 February 2026
The Society for Textual Scholarship (North America) warmly invites scholars to participate in its annual conference to explore the rich and evolving relationship between Textual Studies and Memory Studies.
Proposals are welcome to engage with a wide range of topics, including (but not limited to):
- Texts (broadly conceived) as Sites or Agents of Memory and Forgetting
- Editorial Practice and the Politics of Remembrance
- Manuscripts and Memory work
- Scribal Memory / Print Memory / Digital Memory
- Text, Palimpsest, Memory
- Textual Ruins, Fragmentary Memory
- Text as Monument / Monuments as Text
- Archival Memory / Archival Forgetting
- Archives and the Future of Memory
- Memory, Materiality, and Textual Transmission
- Textual scholarship in Transitional Justice and Historical Reckoning
- Memory, Censorship, and the Re-writing of History
- Canon, Memory, Forgetting: What/whose texts are remembered, whose are forgotten?
- AI and Memory / AI’s Memory
- Editing and Re-memory / Editing and Post-memory
- Artifacts as Memory Sites
- Postcolonial and Decolonial Approaches to Memory
- Diaspora and the Textual Transmission of Memory
- Textual Memory and Decolonization
- Queer Memory
- Testimony, Trauma, and Textual Forms
- Aging Bodies / Texts of Memory
- Memory and the Textual Poetics of Care
- Memory in Marginalia, Annotations, and Paratexts
In a joint effort to strengthen the bonds between the Society for Textual Scholarship (STS) and The European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS), we invite our members to participate in the 2026 STS conference in New York. Proposed session formats may include workshops/seminars, panels, roundtables, and individual papers. As such, ESTS members planning to attend the conference are welcome to submit an individual paper proposal, informing the STS organisation that it should be included in the ESTS panel. Alternatively, a joint panel proposal of 3-4 ESTS members may also be submitted on behalf of the ESTS membership.
Abstracts should be submitted by 1 February 2026 to societyfortextualscholarship@gmail.com
Please do not hesitate to contact the ESTS Secretary if you need assistance to coordinate this delegation.
For more details, including how to submit, visit the conference website here.
ESTS 2026 CFP Deadline Extension
If you were planning to submit an abstract for our upcoming ESTS 2026 conference (28–30 May 2026 in Lublin, Poland), but ran out of time, we have good news: the deadline has just been extended until 20 December 2025!
This year’s theme is Edition and Interpretation, but, as usual, abstracts engaging with the full spectrum of textual studies and (digital) scholarly editing are also welcome.
Please visit the conference’s official website for more information.
We look forward to reading your submissions and hope to see you in Lublin!
Reminder: CfP ESTS 2026
Here is a gentle reminder that the submission deadline for our ESTS 2026 conference (28-30 May in Lublin, Poland) is 30 November!
This year’s theme is Edition and Interpretation, but, as usual, abstracts engaging with the full spectrum of textual studies and (digital) scholarly editing are also welcome.
Please visit the conference’s official website for more information.
We look forward to reading your submissions and hope to see you in Lublin!
Call for Papers: ESTS 2026
The 21st annual conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship
Venue: John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland
Dates: 28-30 May 2026
Pre-Conference Workshop: 27 May 2026
Edition and Interpretation
Abstract submission deadline: 30 November 2025
The European Society for Textual Scholarship warmly invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to participate in its 21st annual conference, bringing together international experts in textual scholarship and textual culture. At the heart of this conference lies the concept of interpretation — a fundamental practice that bridges textual scholarship and literary criticism, opening productive dialogues between editorial methodologies and critical approaches to understanding texts.
The central focus of ESTS 2026 is the complex relationship between editorial practice and textual interpretation. We seek to examine how editorial decisions fundamentally shape textual understanding, and conversely, how interpretative frameworks inform editorial methodology. We welcome submissions that engage with the full spectrum of textual scholarship, encompassing both traditional philological approaches and innovative digital methodologies. We particularly encourage submissions that explore how scholarly editions generate new interpretative possibilities, how manuscripts and printed books reveal layers of meaning through their materiality, and how textual scholarship provides fresh angles and evidence for literary criticism.
We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following areas:
- Classical Textual Criticism: Theories and methodologies of scholarly editing, textual criticism, and philological practice, with attention to how editorial choices influence interpretative possibilities.
- Genetic Criticism and Authorial Philology: Analysis of creative processes, textual materiality, and the editorial treatment of authorial drafts and variants, exploring how manuscript evidence shapes our understanding of literary works.
- Material Texts and Interpretation: Studies of manuscripts, printed books, and other textual artifacts that demonstrate how physical features, layouts, marginalia, and paratexts contribute to meaning-making and interpretative practices.
- Interdisciplinary Approaches: Integration of literary studies, philosophy, linguistics, art history, and computational methods in textual research, with emphasis on interpretative frameworks.
- Comparative Textual Criticism: Exploration of editorial traditions and methodologies across diverse cultural and linguistic contexts, examining how different editorial approaches yield distinct interpretative outcomes.
- Digital Humanities in Textual Scholarship: TEI encoding, Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technologies, digital scholarly editions, visualisation of textual variants, and data interoperability standards, with attention to how digital tools open new interpretative dimensions.
- Case Studies: Critical editions of literary, philosophical, musical, or manuscript works that demonstrate the interplay between editorial practice and interpretation, with particular attention to how editorial challenges and solutions affect textual understanding and critical reception.
- Editorial Practice and Literary Criticism: Explorations of how scholarly editions inform, challenge, or transform literary interpretation, and how interpretative theories and practices influence editorial decisions.
Submission Guidelines
- Abstracts must be submitted in English (maximum 250 words + bio of maximum 100 words) through a submission platform on ests2026.arfi.kul.pl
- Presentations will be allocated 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
- Contributors and panel chairs must pay the conference fee and must be members in good standing of the European Society for Textual Scholarship for 2026 (except invited speakers).
- Conference Fees: standard registration €100; reduced rate (postgraduate students and early-career researchers) €75.
Important Dates
- Abstract Submission Deadline: 30 November 2025
- Notification of Acceptance: 20 January 2026
- Conference Fee Payment Deadline: 31 March 2026
- Final Programme Publication: 1 April 2026
- Pre-Conference Workshop: 27 May 2026
- Conference: 28–30 May 2026
For more details, including how to submit, visit the conference website here.
STS representative to the ESTS Board
We are pleased to announce Stephanie Browner as the new representative of the Society for Textual Scholarship (STS) to the Board of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS).
We look forward to working with this esteemed colleague and contributing to ongoing scholarly discussions across the pond.
Call for papers for Variants
Participants of the 20th Annual Conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship are warmly encouraged to submit a full-paper version of their talk to Variants, the Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship. As always, scholars who did not attend the ESTS 2025 conference are also welcome to contribute to our journal.
Variants is a diamond Open Access journal that publishes high-quality research in textual scholarship and is maintained by and for the ESTS community. The journal always welcomes spontaneous submissions, but also puts out targeted calls for papers after relevant conferences to invite presenters to develop their talks into full-length articles for publication. Submissions that fall within the scope of the journal will be considered for the next available issue and included in our external single-blind peer review process.
Papers submitted in response to this call will be considered for Variants 20, scheduled for publication in 2026. We expect to receive the full papers at the end of this summer. The suggested length of submissions for Variants is approximately 7000 words, excluding references and appendices, and should be written in English. For more details, please check out our page with Information for Authors.
If you are interested in submitting a paper for Variants, please send an Expression of Interest to <variants@textualscholarship.eu> by Friday 6 June. In your message, please include:
- The name(s) of the author(s);
- A preliminary title for the contribution;
- A preliminary abstract of approximately 200 words; and
- At least two suggestions for possible reviewers.
If you are basing your contribution on your conference paper, you are free to repurpose the title and abstract you submitted to the conference to the extent that it is still relevant.
For the reviewers, please include their name, affiliation, and work email address. The reviewers you suggest must be relevant to your field and unlikely to decline an invitation for purely conflict of interest reasons. Please be aware that these reviewers are suggestions and that the editors of the issue may or may not decide to contact one or more of your suggestions in the review process.
The preliminary timeline for the publication process for this issue looks as follows:
- 6 June 2025: Expression of Interest
- 1 September 2025: Full paper deadline
- December 2025: conclusion of reviewing process
- Spring 2026: revision and copyediting stages
- Fall 2026: Publication
If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to send a message to <variants@textualscholarship.eu>.
We very much look forward to receiving your Expression of Interest and reading your full submissions!
On behalf of the Editorial Board of Variants,
Wout Dillen (General Editor)
Elsa Pereira (Associate Editor)
Stefano Rosignoli (Review Editor)
Amendment to the bylaws
The Bylaws of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, containing the rules and regulations within which the Society operates, have been amended during our 20th annual conference, which took place in Tours, on 28-30 April 2025.
The current revised version of the Bylaws was approved by the ESTS Board on 28 April 2025 and ratified by the ESTS Membership during the 2025 General Members’ Meeting.
For more information, please refer to our Bylaws page.
ESTS 2025 Programme
For its twentieth annual conference, the European Society for Textual Scholarship is heading to Tours, the heart of the Loire Valley, from the 28th to the 30th of April 2025. The CESR – Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance at the University of Tours – welcomes the ESTS community to the birthplace of the French Renaissance to discuss Manuscripts in the Age of Print. The conference topic is inspired by the new ERC project PRIMA, which focuses on manuscript production, circulation, and consumption in Ancient Regime Europe.
The programme organised by the conference team includes various social activities, a workshop, a poster session, plenary lectures, and almost 50 oral presentations. It will also host the Board Meeting that welcomes the newly elected Board Members and Officers of the ESTS.
For more details, please visit the conference website here.
2025 Membership and Board Elections
The ESTS Board has received nominations from three strong candidates whose eligibility has been confirmed. Since the number of eligible candidates did not exceed the number of vacancies, we do not need to organise further elections. Instead, we are pleased to announce Beatrice Nava, Krista Stinne Greve Rasmussen, and Paulius V. Subačius as Board members and look forward to welcoming them to our next annual meeting.
In 2025, the ESTS conference is heading to Tours (France) from the 28th to the 30th of April. Registration will officially open by the end of January, but please note that all registered speakers must be paid-up members of the Society. The ESTS annual membership begins on the 1st of January (ending on the 31st of December). Please do not forget to renew your membership by transferring the 2025 fee to the Society’s bank account. For further information, please refer to the webpage https://textualscholarship.eu/membership/.
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