The ESSE Board has decided that as of 2017 an ESSE Doctoral Symposium will be organized every year. The first ESSE Doctoral Symposium will take place in Thessaloníki, Greece on 28-29 August 2017. The second will form part of the ESSE Conference to be held in Brno, Czech Republic in 2018; the third will be organized in Wrocław, Poland in 2019; the fourth will form part of the ESSE Conference to be held in Lyon, France in 2020. The Symposium gives more concrete and recognizable form to the biennial ESSE Doctoral Sessions that were organized as part of the ESSE Conferences in Istanbul (2012), Košice (2014) and Galway (2016).

The Symposium is designed to provide a platform for young scholars to present their work, specifically for PhD students who are writing their theses in English Studies and are at least in the second year of their doctoral studies at the time of the Symposium in question. They are invited to make a brief presentation of their work in progress in one of three areas, known as strands: English Language & Linguistics, Literatures in English, and Cultural & Area Studies. These presentations should deal with the issues addressed or hypotheses tested in the doctoral research, the results so far obtained, and above all the methodology applied, with the purpose of gaining feedback from peers and established scholars in the field. Each presentation will last no longer than 15 minutes, followed by 15 minutes’ discussion. Participants are expected to attend all the presentations in their own strand and to take part in the discussions. There will also be extensive opportunities for informal contact with other participants and with the academics present.