Organizing Details

About the Conference

The 10th European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSAeu) conference brought together academics, researchers, and students to explore the theme of Control across literature, science, and the arts. Hosted by the Department of English at Stockholm University, the four-day event featured keynote lectures, academic streams, and an experimental program component.

The conference took place at the Geoscience building on the Frescati Campus, with introductory sessions and keynote lectures held in Aula Magna. Attendees travelled to Stockholm from across Europe and beyond; travel and accommodation details remain available for reference.

Registration for this event closed in 2016.

The concept of control permeates literary narratives across centuries, from dystopian visions of totalitarian oversight to intimate stories of personal agency and its limits. Writers have long explored how characters navigate systems of power, whether social, political, or psychological. In speculative fiction, control often manifests through surveillance, technological domination, or ideological enforcement. Meanwhile, literary forms themselves engage with control through structure, voice, and narrative restraint. The tension between order and chaos, regulation and liberation, provides fertile ground for storytelling. By examining how control operates within fictional worlds, readers gain insight into the mechanisms that shape their own societies and the subtle ways power circulates through language and culture.

Scientific understandings of control have evolved dramatically, from early cybernetic models to contemporary theories of complex adaptive systems. Control in this context is not merely about domination but about regulation, feedback loops, and the maintenance of equilibrium within dynamic environments. Biological systems offer rich examples, from cellular homeostasis to neural regulation of behavior. Ecological networks demonstrate how control emerges through interdependence rather than hierarchy. In technological domains, control systems govern everything from industrial processes to digital communications. The scientific study of control reveals that it is rarely absolute or unidirectional; instead, it operates through constant adjustment, negotiation, and response to changing conditions across multiple scales of organization.

Artistic practice engages with control on multiple levels, from the disciplined mastery of technique to the deliberate surrender of authorial command. Many artists have explored the boundary between intention and accident, using chance operations, generative processes, or collaborative methods that distribute control across participants. Performance art often interrogates the power dynamics between performer and audience, while visual arts examine how framing and institutional contexts shape meaning. The relationship between control and creativity is paradoxical: too much constraint stifles innovation, yet complete freedom can produce formlessness. Artists navigate this tension constantly, making choices about when to exert control and when to let go, inviting unpredictability into their work.

The interdisciplinary study of control reveals how concepts migrate between fields, transforming as they travel. Literary theories of narrative control resonate with scientific models of systems regulation; artistic explorations of authorship connect to philosophical questions about free will and determinism. The SLSAeu conference provides a space where these conversations can unfold across traditional boundaries, allowing researchers from different disciplines to discover unexpected resonances. When a literary scholar examines control in a novel and a biologist studies control in a cell, they may find common ground in questions of feedback, constraint, and emergence. These cross-pollinations enrich each field, challenging assumptions and opening new avenues for inquiry that no single discipline could reach alone.

Contemporary life is saturated with questions of control in unprecedented ways. Digital technologies track, predict, and shape behavior through algorithms that operate largely beyond individual awareness or influence. Social media platforms design environments that guide attention and emotion, while surveillance systems monitor movement and communication at vast scales. Yet control is never complete; resistance, subversion, and creative misuse persist. People find ways to reclaim agency, whether through encryption, platform alternatives, or simply by refusing to participate. The theme of control in the twenty-first century thus encompasses both the expansion of regulatory technologies and the countervailing forces of autonomy and dissent. Understanding these dynamics requires perspectives from literature, science, and the arts working together.