Registration Open: “The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Solutions and Resolutions”
The Drood Inquiry
Senate House, London
September 20, 2014

To celebrate the official launch of The Drood Inquiry (www.droodinquiry.com), this one-day conference will explore the mysterious world of Drood and its solutions. Further details and updates can be found on our blog at http://cloisterhamtales.wordpress.com/category/the-drood-conference/. Tickets can be purchased at bit.ly/1oKSllb.Ticket prices include refreshments and lunch, while the conference itself will take place in the appropriately courtroom-like state of the Senate Room itself: what better place to hold a public inquiry?

Draft Programme

09:30-10:00 Registration

10:00-10:45 Keynote: "Reflections on past and present Drood scholarship" (Professor Don Richard Cox, University of Tennessee) with an Introduction "The Heritage of Edwin Drood" (Chair: Dr Pete Orford, University of Buckingham)

10:50-11:45 Panel 1: The Solutions of Edwin Drood (Chair: Dr Pete Orford, University of Buckingham)

• “Imitating the inimitable: attempts to complete Edwin Drood” (Dr Camill Ullelan Hoel and Dr Tor Nordam, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
• “M R James and the Edwin Drood Syndicate” (Jane Piddock, University of Aberystwyth)

11:45-12:00 Coffee break

12:00-1:30 Panel 2: The Appropriation of Edwin Drood (Chair: Professor John Drew, University of Buckingham)

• “Premonition of the End: Fictionality in Dickens's Edwin Drood and Gissing's Henry Ryecroft” (Tom Ue, University of Birkbeck)
• “'Another kind of immortality, more essential and more strange': Dickensian hauntings, in the works of Susan Howe and Jean-Piere Ohl” (Clemence Follea, Universite Parie Diderot)
• “Evidence, storytelling, and the resistance of closure in Dan Simmon's Drood” (Dr Anne-Marie Beller, University of Loughborough)

1:30-2:30 Lunch (provided)

2:30-4:00 Panel 3: The Characters of Edwin Drood (Chair: Professor David Paroissien, University of Buckingham)

• “From 'universal terrorist' to 'tragic anti-hero': John Jasper as a villain of the times” (Dr Jonathan Buckmaster, Royal Holloway)
• “The Identification of Sapsea Sven Karsten, Independent The Mystery of Heads in Drood” (Emma Curry, University of Birkbeck)

4:00-4:15 Coffee break

4:15-5:00 Panel 4: The Locations of Edwin Drood (Chair: Dr Hazel Mackenzie, University of Buckingham)

• “'The great black city cast it's shadow on the waters': Jasper's London in The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (Hadas Elber-Aviram, University College, London)
• “'Venerable, Architectural and Inconvenient': The Rented Spaces of Edwin Drood” (Ushashi Dasgupta, University of Oxford)

5:05-5:45 Round table: The Digitalisation of Edwin Drood (Chair: Dr Hazel Mackenzie, University of Buckingham)

• “Discussion from the Drood Inquiry team on digitalising Drood” (Dr Pete Orford, University of Buckingham, Alys Jones)

Ticket prices include lunch and refreshments throughout the day – please contact the organizers to notify of any special dietary requirements.