For the first time, the Anglo-Catalan Society’s annual congress will be held in Ireland from 5 to 7 September, at the University of Cork in the south-east of the country. The event will be centred on the theme of “Memory and the Culture of Commemoration in Catalan-speaking Territories”. The programme includes talks, among others, by the journalist Miquel Calçada –who will open the congress–, the translator Joan Sellent –who will close it– and the writer Lluïsa Julià –who will talk about the identity movements of the seventies in Maria-Mercè Marçal. There will also be a round table to debate on the Catalan independence movement and a poetry recital on Joan Vinyoli and Josep Pla.

Furthermore, on 10 September the Associació de Catalanistes d’Amèrica Llatina organizes the symposium entitled “América Catalunya – Catalunya América”, co-ordinated by Montserrat Galí (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico), as part of the XVII International Congress of the AHILA at Freie University in Berlin. At the event, matters such as Catalan presence in South America during the period of colonization and the impact of Latin American immigration in Catalonia will be discussed.

In addition, Ruhr University Bochum will host the 24th DKV international conference from 17 to 19 September. In this case, the central theme of the event will be “Cultures in contact”, which will be analysed from different standpoints. For example, Catalan involvement in the de-colonization process in Latin America will be debated, and problems in translating from Catalan and German will be discussed. The Head of the Language and Universities Area of the IRL will participate in the opening act.

The international association of Catalan studies are a total of seven entities dedicated to the dissemination of Catalan culture through a range of activities carried out by academics of the language. The Anglo-Catalan Society was founded in 1954 in Oxford and since then it has held a conference each year to debate on topics relating to all areas where Catalan is spoken. The German-Catalan Association is the successor of the Deutsch-Katalanische Gesellschaft, created in 1983 in Karlsruhe, and focuses its activities on the promotion of scientific projects. In 2012, the Associació de Catalanistes de l’Amèrica Llatina was created in the city of Guadalajara in Mexico, with the aim of promoting the study of Catalan language, literature and culture.