Edinburgh Napier University

  The first event of its kind in the UK, this conference on ‘Reading and Writing in Prison’ seeks to raise the profile of existing research and practice in relation to British prisons and facilitate new dialogues between British researchers and international scholars. One of the distinctive features of this conference is that it actively seeks to bring together scholars, creative writers and practitioners to share their perspectives. The aims of this conference are twofold. Firstly, it will act as a platform for exchange about current research on reading and writing in prison, from both a historical and contemporary perspective. Secondly, the conference seeks to facilitate future research networks, publications and practical projects that will have public impact (including a special journal issue based on some of the conference contributions and plans for student-inmate reading groups at Scottish penal institutions). The event thus explicitly encourages conversations across the disciplines, between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ and between the academy and the wider public.