Papers will explore Merseyside’s culture and assess its contribution to regional/national and international cultures. Papers covering any variety of cultural expression – high/low, lived/imagined, minority/majority – and their interconnections will be considered. Topics may include, but are not limited to, folk and ethnic cultures, depictions of the region, food and drink, material culture, sport, art and artists, literature, political culture, religious traditions, the representation of identity in museums and galleries, and travel writing.

Papers delivered at earlier CLAMS conferences (on Identity and Empire respectively) have been included in two publications, and papers selected for this conference will be considered for publication.

Submissions from individuals working in museums, art galleries, theatres and other cultural institutions are welcome. This conference will address both historical and contemporary manifestations of culture. In addition, the concept of culture itself, and how varying definitions of this transform the region’s cultural texture, will be interrogated.

The conference will be structured around four themes:

1 Defining culture, defining Merseyside

2 Representing identity: Presenting and performing Merseyside

3 Regional identities: Cultures within the region

4 Comparing cultures: Merseyside and elsewhere

It would be appreciated if contributors related their proposed papers to one or more of these themes. There is scope for those who have worked on other areas, and issues of culture in a broader, theoretical sense, to offer papers under themes one and four. The conference seeks to shed light on the region’s culture, both material and symbolic, through comparisons with other places and intellectual concepts from a range of disciplines.