Dr Pilar Mur-Dueñas delivers a plenary at an International Conference in Sfax

Our senior member Dr Pilar Mur-Dueñas is back from giving her plenary talk at the International Conference on Authorship and Authority celebrated at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities(FLSHS), University of Sfax (Tunisia). The Conference was themed around issues regarding "Who Writes?: Authorship and Authority in Transformative Times" and was held over three days, between February 5th and 7th, 2026.

The event was organised by the joint collaboration between the Department of English, the Laboratory of Approaches to Discourse (LAD), the Laboratory of Language and Automatic Treatment and the Doctoral School at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Sfax. Its success was possible thanks to the concerted efforts of the conference coordinators, Radhia Besbes Krid and Sabiha Choura, as well as of the dedication from the scientific committee and from the directors of laboratories and associations, like Professor Akila Sellami (Director of the LAD) and Professor Fatma Benelhadj (Executive Member of SYFLAT).

Dr Mur-Dueñas's plenary was titled "Authorial Voices in Digital Expert Knowledge Dissemination: Discursive Roles and Audience Relationships". There, she explored and reflected on how specific discursive choices in digital expert knowledge dissemination texts enact different authorial identities – such as "explainer", "arguer" or "narrator"– to bridge knowledge asymmetries, reconfiguring the relationship between experts and their audiences. You can read more on her paper here.

It was a highly enriching and stimulating conference intellectually and culturally. Participants provided lots of food for thought on authorship and authority issues through manifold perspectives and frameworks from linguistic, literature and cultural studies.

Congratulations to the organising institutions, to the scientific committee and to all speakers and attendants on hosting such a fruitful conference.

Many thanks for inviting our senior member to participate!