Woolf conference celebrates author's enduring relevance for modern audiences
King’s College London hosted pre-conference events for the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf on 4 July 2025.
Panel members Dr Jon Day, Olivia Laing, Jo Hamya, A T Kabe Wilson and Uzma Hameed, with Professor Anna Snaith. (Image: Richard Eaton)
Organised by Professor Anna Snaith and Dr Clara Jones from King’s Department of English, and Dr Helen Tyson from the University of Sussex, the event returned to the UK for 2025 to two institutions with strong Woolfian connections.
Pre-conference activities included visits to the King’s Archives, a roundtable discussion on ‘Virginia Woolf: Creative Engagements’, and music by the Woolf Quartet.
It has been such an honour and a joy to work with Clara Jones and Helen Tyson bringing the 34th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference to King’s and Sussex – two locations with which Woolf had close ties. This is a long-running annual conference known for its showcasing of not only cutting-edge scholarship on Woolf and her contexts and contemporaries but also creative responses to Woolf’s life and work. We are delighted to be continuing that tradition and welcoming artists, scholars and readers of Woolf from around the world.
Professor Anna Snaith, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature
Conference participants were able to view these original items on a visit to the archives, with Professor Snaith explaining how the discovery has impacted Woolf studies.
King’s College Ladies’ Department registration book from King’s College Archives (KWA/RAD 3-7).
Woolf's creative legacy
The panel event, ‘Virginia Woolf: Creative Engagements’, brought together a roundtable of artists, creative writers and practitioners to reflect on the role Woolf’s life and writing plays in their work.
Dr Clara Jones and Professor Anna Snaith introduce 'Virginia Woolf: Creative Engagements'. (Image: Richard Eaton)
Director and dramaturg Uzma Hameed, novelists Jo Hamya and Olivia Laing, theatre and opera director Katie Mitchell, and multi-media artist A T Kabe Wilson, were in dialogue with Dr Jon Day, Reader in English and Creative Writing in the Department of English, about what it means to engage with Woolf’s literary and artistic legacies in our own contemporary moment. Their discussion considered the aspects of Woolf’s work that they champion and those they critique.
Virginia Woolf’s daring aesthetics and her interrogations of her socio-political moment continue to resonate in our contemporary moment. This plenary discussion of Woolf and the creative encounter brings together a rich and diverse set of writers, artists and practitioners to reflect on the possibilities and challenges of engaging with Woolf today.
Dr Clara Jones, Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature
Kabe Wilson and Jo Hamya. (Image: Richard Eaton)
The event concluded with a performance by the Woolf Quartet, comprised of Zosia Herlihy-O’Brien (violin), Emily Harrison (violin), Beatrice Slocumbe (viola) and Emma Osterrieder (cello, deputy for Hoda Jahanpour).
Founded at the Royal Academy of Music, the group perform well-known repertoire side by side with unexplored and contemporary music as part of their commitment to the coming together of new and old. Named after Woolf, the quartet rehearses on the site where the author once lived.
The Woolf Quartet performs at King's. (Image: Richard Eaton)
