We are now inviting submissions for the 2025 International Association for the Study of Popular Romance Conference. It will take place from June 24-26 2025 at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, with a Zoom option for people unable to attend in person. We are accepting submissions for papers, panels, or workshops delivered in English or Spanish. 

Our theme for the 2025 IASPR conference is Romantic Regions, thinking through the evolving relationships between romance, place, and space, building on the previous two IASPR conferences—Sydney 2018 (“Think Globally, Love Locally”) and Birmingham 2023 (“Romance Revitalised”). We encourage people to think broadly and creatively about the idea of the “region”, which may refer to geographic, economic, and/or political regions such as North America, or may be approached from more abstract angles. As Lisa Fletcher and Elizabeth Leane argue in Space, Place and Bestsellers, bestselling novels—like romance novels and other romantic media—“are spatialised in their industrial, social, and textual operations” (2024, 3). This can occur in many different scales, localities and contexts, and we invite you to explore whichever of these you like. 

We welcome papers on any of the following in relation to romance (not an exhaustive list):

• World-building / imaginary geographies / secondary worlds
• Translation
• Transnational movement / circulation
• Migration
• Escapism and situated reading
• Romance outside of the global north
• Space
• Adaptation / romance across genres
• Genre boundaries
• Genre-breaking / shifting 
• Comparative studies (across regions, genres, languages)

“Romance” here is not limited to popular romance fiction: we welcome discussions of romance in any form. While our theme focuses on place and space, we are also open to papers that take other approaches to romance. If it’s about romance, we’re interested!

Popular Romance Studies is an interdisciplinary field, including (but not limited to) scholars from literary studies; film, television, and media studies; communication and the social sciences; critical race, feminist, queer and disability studies; audience & fan studies, etc. All theoretical and empirical approaches are welcome. So too are all types of contributions, including talks, panels, and workshops on professional development, international collaboration, and pedagogy. Content creators, writers, and professionals from various romance industries are invited to submit proposals as well. 

Submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words, by November 30, 2024, through the following Google form: https://forms.gle/PqBPPnaxMfgmvUFGA

Panel submissions of 3-4 related papers are welcome (please provide 250 word abstracts for all papers, along with 100 word biographies of each speaker). If you are proposing a workshop, please fill this form out as if you were submitting a paper, and note that it is a workshop in the title. You must be a member of IASPR to present at the conference. 

Please indicate if you are intending to attend in-person or online. You are not locked into this if your plans change, but it will help us get a rough idea of numbers. 

If you do not have a permanent academic job at a university (eg. PhD students, contingently employed staff, independent scholars), you may be eligible for the Kathleen Seidel Travel Grant. Please note when you submit your abstract if you wish to receive more information about this opportunity, which will be available in the coming months. If you have any questions or are having difficulty submitting, please contact us at conferences@iaspr.org.