Dear Colleagues,
We are now accepting proposals for the 2027 Writing Through the Lifespan Conference: Meeting the Moment, Building Our Futures. The conference will be held in person at the University of Maine campus in Orono July 12-14, 2027. (This immediately follows the IWAC conference which UMaine is also hosting.)
The 2027 Writing through the Lifespan Conference is happening at a consequential historic moment: massive social, technological, and economic upheaval; increasing international conflict; and a multinational squaring off of fascism and democracy. How can lifespan writing research (LWR) understand how people develop as writers under these changing conditions? Can we provide guidance to develop writers who can meet the challenge of these times? What is the work that we, those of us interested in LWR, have been given to do to speak to this moment? Furthermore, how might we build futures for writers and writing—and what might those futures look like—in such circumstances?
For this call, we invite our colleagues—those who have been involved with LWR for some time, those new to the scene, and those who may not have considered it previously—to consider how their work speaks to both the emerging agenda of lifespan writing research and the demands of our particular moment in history. Where do your passions and the needs of lifespan writing research, your disciplines, your communities, and the world converge? What can you tell us about that convergence? How can doing that work help us to build deliberate coalitions of researchers doing meaningful, impactful work on writing through the lifespan?
This is a capacious call: we seek to celebrate our decade of work on writing through the lifespan, to meet the challenges of the present moment, and to plan for a brighter future both in this research agenda and more widely. To suggest potential avenues for exploration, the following questions serve as an entry point into the possibilities of this call, inviting you to consider how your work might both address our current challenges and help construct a collective future:
- How can LWR be a way to facilitate interconnectedness across generations?
- How do we articulate LWR in turbulent or traumatic times?
- How do I document my own writing process, change, and growth across wide swaths of time?
- How can we examine education or other writing-impacted policy and its effects “on the ground” for writers and writing?
- How might one collaborate with writers who are no longer living, such as family members, friends, historical or organizational figures? What methods might be available?
In addition to these questions that meet the moment, participants in the Writing Through the Lifespan Conference also welcome proposals that address these ongoing questions:
- What are the latest lifespan writing research findings?
- What do lifespan writing researchers need to know? Particularly with so many researchers situated in North America and in English/writing programs, what are important findings from other fields, traditions, and contexts?
- What new language and metaphors can we use to think about writing and the development of writers?
- How might we account for the complexity and variability of writing across different epochs of the lifespan?
- How do perceptions of role and agency within communities of writers shape writing identity?
- How does motivation and affect shape perceptions of a writing self, as well as literate action?
- How do the technologies/media available for writing influence writer identity?
- How might the relationships among writing curricula, writing pedagogy, and life outside of schooling be understood from a lifespan perspective?
- How does the proliferation of writing media (e.g. social media, generative AI, digital composing) and the increasing accessibility of those media impact writers’ understanding of their work and its value?
- What are the core questions driving research in lifespan writing development?
- What does writing itself develop?
- How might the Writing Through the Lifespan collaboration form partnerships with others?
We seek proposals for individual research presentations (20 minutes), panel presentations (3 or more researchers, 60 minutes total), or work-in-progress presentations (10 minutes of presentation followed by 15 minutes of discussion).
Proposals are due by November 15, 2026 and should be lifespanwriting.
Best,
Talinn Phillips
Talinn Phillips, PhD (she)
Professor of English Rhetoric & Composition
Director of Composition & the Writing Certificate
Co-Chair, Writing Through the Lifespan Collaboration
Series Co-Editor, Lifespan Writing Research | WAC Clearinghouse
Series Co-Editor, Practice, Pedagogy, and Programming for Graduate Communication | University of Michigan Press
Ellis Hall 229
Ohio University
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