On April 13-14 the University of Kent hosted the annual conference for The European Society for Textual Scholarship.

The European Society for Textual Scholarship provides an international and interdisciplinary forum for the theory and practice of textual scholarship in Europe. It was established in 2001 in close collaboration with the Society for Textual Scholarship (North America).

The conference was the largest ever gathering of the ESTS society with more than 110 delegates. Across a packed two-day schedule, the conference featured 32 parallel panel and roundtable sessions, literary walking tours in Canterbury, exhibitions in Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives and the Templeman Library Special Collections, digital exhibitions, and a reception at Canterbury Cathedral Chapter House.

The Oxford Marlowe editorial project was represented in several ways. Rory Loughnane was Chair of the Planning and Organising Committees for the conference, and Catherine Richardson was on the Planning Committee. There were panel and roundtable contributions from several members of the editorial team:  Gabriel Egan, Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith, and Rory Loughnane. So, too, there was a special ‘New Directions in Marlowe Studies’ panel featuring outstanding contributions from five doctoral students associated with the project:

Chair: Stephanie D’Angelo

Laura Romain, ‘A Conflict of Interests: Mapping the contextual and editorial conflicts in Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris’

Jon Pinkerton, ‘The iterating of these lines brings gold: tracking Faustus‘s reprints’

Emma Rose Kraus, ‘Placing the Prick in Dido, Queen of Carthage: Performance Practice as a Tool for Textual Scholarship’

These papers were then followed by an insightful response from Irene Vilquin which prompted further discussion.

Members of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) were central to the conference’s planning and organization, with key responsibilities undertaken by current PhD students in MEMS: Ségolène Gence (Programming and Communication Officer), Jon Pinkerton (Registration Officer and Secretary) and Samantha McCarthy (Social Officer and Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives Liaison Officer). The Planning Committee included colleagues from across the University of Kent, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives, and Loughborough University.