CFP: Pre-Raphaelite! Workshop – Tate Britain

Call for Papers: Pre-Raphaelite! Workshop

Tate Britain, 30 October 2026

Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2026

Region: East of England Type: Conference Cost: Free

We welcome students, early career and established scholars of Pre-Raphaelitism, from any discipline, to contribute to a workshop, in anticipation of an exhibition programmed for summer 2028. We invite case-studies which demonstrate new research, evidence and approaches. We are seeking 15 minute papers, focussing on a work of pictorial art, design, music or literature made between 1848-1914, from anywhere in the world. We are especially interested in under- or mis-represented artists and in medieval themes. We also ask if and how Pre-Raphaelitism might be current in our own century.

The exhibition will consider how Pre-Raphaelitism responded to personal, local and global changes with new stories, and how its content, style and methods changed to tell these. It interrogates Pre-Raphaelitism through first and later generations of artists. Artworks might include photography, illustration, murals, textiles, and other media, as well as painting and poetry. Proposals offering fresh, decentrering and critical perspectives may explore (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• entwinings between art, design, music, literature etc
• Pre-Raphaelite photography
• methods and techniques
• overlooked art
• interrogating ‘influence’
• studios and studio homes
• Swinburne or other poets
• making visible the invisible (emotion, thought, supernatural etc)
• dress and dressing
• nature, the body and the senses (including hair)
• space and place
• transnational Pre-Raphaelitism
• friendship, consent, love and partnership
• children and parents
• literary and historical women and men
• medieval manuscripts and other early sources
• Pre-Raphaelite Gothic
• folk and vernacular
• power, conflict, battle or war
• faiths and spirituality
• C20th and C21st Pre-Raphaelite legacies

How to submit

Please submit an abstract of 200-250 words for a 15-minute paper, along with a brief biography, to carol.jacobi@tate.org.uk and nicole.cochrane@tate.org.uk by Monday 15 September 2026. Decisions will be notified w/c 22 September 2026.