Gossip: A Multidisciplinary Conference16th-18th June 2027Newcastle University, UK What a gossip!  To gossip is to be disruptive, to be unsocial; it is also to bring people together, to be social.  One is a gossip, and one gossips – noun and verb speak to the semantic fluctuations of this concept; as Patricia Meyer Spacks notes, in her seminal work on gossip, the term has had a vexed and complex history. From carvings on tomb walls in Old Kingdom Egypt to the chatter in teahouses of the Tang dynasty, and from the corridors of Versailles to Snapchat streaks today, gossip has served as a means of circulating knowledge: forming publics and counterpublics; policing morality; controlling identities; forging and maintaining social bonds; making and breaking reputations.  This multidisciplinary conference is interested in the figure of the gossip and the act of gossiping: these are transhistorical and transcultural phenomena and they cut across scholarly disciplines.   We welcome traditional conference papers and panels, as well as roundtables, workshops and critical-creative sessions. The conference will have sessions dedicated to co-writing and the development of networks, and funding applications: gossipy activities and connections will be encouraged. Invitations to apply for one of the several funded keynote address spots will be extended to those PGRs/ECRs whose abstracts are accepted. Abstracts from all disciplines (including, but not exclusively so, history, gender and race studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, law, literature, geography, medicine, media and communication studies, film, business) are welcome for this in-person conference. Please share the CFP with colleagues in all these disciplines: spread the word, have a coze, spill the tea! Possible topics include, but are not limited to, gossip and any of the following:

• Oral, manuscript, print, visual and/or digital forms 
• Identity politics 
• Epistemology 
• Control, law, power 
• Literature/film/television 
• Socio-cultural figurations 
• Genre and narrative
• Management structures 
• Media and discourse
• Semantics 
• Phenomenology

 Submission of 300-Word Abstract (including 5-6 keywords) in a Word file: 15 December 2026 // Notification of Decision: 15 January 2027 //Registration Deadline: 1 March 2027 // Draft Programme: 15 March 2027 // Conference Organisers: Stacy Gillis, Abi Hockaday & Kirsten MacLeod (School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics - Newcastle University)gossip.conference@ncl.ac.uk