he nineteenth century was marked by unprecedented migration, as people moved to urban centers; were forcibly or semi-forcibly relocated; and emigrated to escape war, famine, economic instability, or other crises. As people moved across Britain and the globe, they created new networks of communication and political alliances. “Migration in this period,” Josephine McDonagh writes, “was a print phenomenon [that] triggered people’s curiosity about emigration, and provided the means, the motives, and the informational framework in which their journeys took place.” Periodicals were a key site where migrations and movements were presented, debated, negotiated, and imagined.
The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals invites scholars to examine the relationship between periodicals, migrations, and movements for our 2026 conference. Topics might include:
- National/transnational circulation of periodicals
- (Foreign) correspondents
- Periodicals moving across space/place (colonial editions)
- Movement & migration within & between periodicals (editors, proprietors, contributors, print formats, etc.)
- Transnational periodical networks
- Periodicals moving across genres, discourses, voices, forms, media
- Periodicals that challenge generic, linguistic, & regional borders
- Changing methodologies in periodical studies (particularly regionalism & periodization)
- Translation, translingualism, & movements across languages
- Transatlantic & transpacific migrations/movements/communications
- Provincial & urban migrations
- Diasporic communities and news
- Temporary or seasonal movements & migrations
- Logistics of the movement of people and goods
- Political movements (in the national & provincial press)
- Colonialisms/Imperialisms (settler, formal, informal, etc.)
- The Great Famine & its aftermaths
- Nationalisms & transnationalisms; boundaries & borders
- Reform, resistance, rebellion – domestically & transnationally
- Enslavement & abolitionism
- Free trade in the periodical press
- Race & racialization
- Identities & identity construction in response to movements & migrations
- Trade journals and professional movements
- Immobility/mobility in periodicals
- Distance and/or proximity in periodicals Intimacy and/or detachment in periodicals
- Transports
- Travel guides and advertising in the Victorian press
- Religious movements; moving to or away from a faith or a belief system
- Musical or poetic movements in the press
We particularly welcome papers on Ireland, which saw mass outmigration throughout the nineteenth century. We also invite proposals on the changing contours of Victorian periodical studies over the past decades. In what ways have our subjects of study moved and migrated? How must we adapt our methodologies to attend to these new subjects? What is our archive(s) and how might scholarship move across national and linguistic borders? In what ways does the study of nineteenth century periodicals speak to the world today?
For more information, including submission guidelines, please see our website.
Created 22 October 2025