Call for papers: Dracula Returns A.D.2027

Dracula Returns A.D.2027 is a conference and celebration marking the 103rd anniversary of Dracula’s licensed stage appearance in Derby, organised by The Derby Dracula Enterprise, the community interest company continuing the work of the AHRC-funded Dracula Returns to Derby project. It follows the first Dracula Returns conference of May 2025, which brought more than 100 delegates to the city, with speakers from Italy, Ireland, Moldova, the Czech Republic, Spain and Romania. Derby Dracula Day, 15 May, falls on the conference Saturday.

 

More than 80 public events have run since 2024, among them the Pickford’s House exhibition Dracula Returns to Derby: 101 Years and Counting (May 2025 to June 2026), with objects lent by The Dracula Society and Dacre Stoker, and the launch of a Derby Dracula trail of some twenty documented sites, with an audio trail alongside. The Florence Stoker Award was first conferred on Derby Dracula Day 2026. Dracula’s Bazaar has grown into a recurring gothic market of traders and makers, anchoring festivals from Hot Goth Summer to Gothmas, and a scholarly community across some twenty universities and organisations such as the Dracula Society has formed around the project. In 2026, Catherine Atkinson MP told the House of Commons that Derby is ‘reclaiming Dracula as a son of Derby’.

 

The reason for all of it is a date. On 15 May 1924 Hamilton Deane’s stage adaptation premiered in Derby and put Stoker’s monster into evening dress: the suave Count the world now recognises, carried by Bela Lugosi into the 1931 film and hundreds of adaptations since, was made here. We welcome papers that test, extend or contest the claim, and papers on everything that made the figure, or what they have since become.

 

The conference’s questions remain open. What is mobilised by the Draculas beyond Stoker’s text, and how has he/she/it been made to mean? How does a figure of threat become a bearer of difference, a way to think about identity, civic history, folklore, queerness, race and disability? What do women hold in the Dracula story, from Florence Stoker, the rights-holder who licensed Deane, to Dora May Patrick, Deane’s unacknowledged co-author, and the touring tradition that recast Quincey Morris as a woman? Who owns a literary place, when Derby, Whitby and Purfleet all press their claims? And what does a project owe the living gothic network it enters? Above all, Dracula is a creature of value, both a magnet for tourism and a mine for adaptation, and it is through manifesting this value that the conference attempts to reckon with it.

 

Our method has been collision. Since 2024 Dracula has met garage rock at the Monster Mash, performance poetry at Poetry Doesn’t Suck, live roleplay at Elvaston Castle, toy theatre, virtual reality, a writing workshop on a moving train and a pop-up kitchen. We encourage proposals in the same spirit. Once again there will vampire poetry, and, hopefully, garage punk via The Cryptkicker 5!

 

The conference will bring together scholars, practitioners and members of the public for three days of papers, panels, performances and celebration. Dracula’s Bazaar of makers and traders runs alongside. Keynote speakers are yet to be announced. Proposals should be 250 words max for 15-minute papers; we also welcome suggestions for special events (including interventions, screenings, demonstrations or performances), themed or grouped panels, or anything that you think might manifest the conference’s themes. Possible topics to be explored, but not limited to, include:

• Hamilton Deane, stage Draculas and the making of the modern Count

• Nosferatu, Orlok and the unauthorised lineage

• Dracula’s wardrobe: evening dress, cloaks and the devil’s costume

• Knives, stakes and dispatching the vampire

• Dracula/the vampire in film, television and other media

• Vampire literature

• The happy gothic and vampire representations for children

• Dracula and diversity

• Dracula, vampires and queerness

• Women in the Dracula story

• Contested geographies: Derby, Whitby, Purfleet and beyond

• Dark tourism, legend tripping and ostension

• Dracula and the visitor economy: markets, merchandising and value

• Gothic genealogies: Frankenstein, the ecogothic and the land

• Vampires, blood and the body

• The goth network: subcultures, festivals and social infrastructure

• Sound, music and performance

• Histories of Derby

• International interpretations and representations of Dracula

• Comedic and parodic representations

• Dracula outside of horror

 

Proposals are due by Halloween, 31 October 2026, via email to dracula@derby.ac.uk, which is also the address for enquiries. We will provide speakers and delegates with information about venue, refreshments and accommodation nearer the time.

 

If you’d like to know more about the Derby Dracula, do visit our website: www.dracula.city.