Festival programme 2026
Wednesday 30 September 2026
When Language Fades: Finding New Ways to Connect
Maggie Ellis
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 13:00-14:00
Around 1 in 11 people over 65 live with dementia, and many of us know how hard communication can become, especially in the later stages. In Dr Maggie Ellis’s talk, you’ll hear how language doesn’t disappear – rather, it changes. Through real-life examples, Maggie explores how tone, gesture, rhythm, and even silence can carry meaning. She will look at how we can still connect, understand, and be understood, reminding us that communication is so much more than words.
Whale Song
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 15:00-16:00
Talk by Luke Rendell with clarinet accompaniment by cetacean specialist Alex South.
This event will comprise a short talk and Q&A session from Luke Rendell on the idea of translating whale communication into language, in which he will argue that musical roots might be at least equally important for framing the scientific understanding of whale communication. This understanding may also take the form of human musical performance, as demonstrated here in works for clarinets and electronics by Alex South.
The Origins of Language
Cat Hobaiter
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 16:30-18:00
A round table led by primatologist Cat Hobaiter
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we can begin. A long list of human behaviours has been proposed as the reason we have language. But decades of research with other species have shown us that 1) they have rich systems of flexible, intentional, meaningful, communication, and also that 2) they do not need language to learn from each other, to organise where and when to forage, to learn cultural knowledge about tools and songs, to co-ordinate hunting, or navigate social politics. It starts to look like human language didn’t evolve for anything very useful at all! In this session we will talk about what we have learned about the origins of language by working with humans and other animals, and ask—at the end of the day—what is communication really for?
Byre World – A discussion about the language and society of three minority cultures of Spain
Byre Studio, 18:30-20:00
Join us for a conversation between Prof Jordi Larios, Mr Dylan Inglis, and Ms Ana Barazal Barreira on three minority languages of Spain: Catalan, Basque, and Galician. Beginning with a poetry reading that will include an example of improvised Basque verse, the event will explore the artistic expression and linguistic rituals in these languages, and how they relate to politics, society, identity, ideology and power.
Thursday 1 October 2026
Two interpreters, three languages, and Laurence Olivier: Performing a live interpretation of Hamlet in British Sign Language
Julia Prest
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 14:00-14:50
In August 2024, at the Edinburgh International Festival, Teatro La Plaza from Peru brought a production of Hamlet to the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh. The play was performed in Peruvian Spanish with English captions provided for the audience. The two presenters provided an interpretation into British Sign Language (BSL) working from the English captions. This presentation will discuss their process and learning when preparing and performing their translation live and will include video clips of the original production in order to discuss the key challenges they encountered.
Translating Taiwan: A Journey of Languages Across Museums and Heritage Sites
Michelle Min-Hsiu Liao
Byre Conference Room, 14:30-15:30
What does it mean to translate a museum, and how might this be understood in the context of Taiwan? This talk offers a relaxed late-afternoon journey through museums and heritage sites in Taiwan, exploring how the island’s languages interact with other semiotic modes in museums to shape visitors’ experiences. Drawing on research in linguistics and translation studies, the presentation examines how multilingual signage, material objects, and spatial layout contribute to the stories that museums tell. Through examples from Taiwan’s museums, the talk will also introduce audiences to the island’s rich linguistic and cultural landscape. It will explore how museums and heritage sites represent, negotiate, and celebrate Taiwan’s layered linguistic and cultural heritage. This talk welcomes everyone — whether you are simply interested in languages and museums, or have visited, plan to visit, or would just like to learn more about Taiwan. Combining academic insight with illustrative visual examples, the talk offers an engaging way of exploring language, museums, heritage, and Taiwan.
Dr Min-Hsiu Liao (廖敏秀) is Associate Professor at Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Her research focuses on multilingual practices in multimodal spaces, including museums, heritage sites, and urban linguistic landscapes. She is the author of the monograph Translation on Display (Routledge, 2025) and also works as a translator and interpreter. This talk draws on her research project funded by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Research Grants, titled Translating Taiwan: A Semiotic Reading of Polyglot Sites, Memories, and Social Inclusion.
Esperanto Taster
Simon Ezra-Jackson
Byre Conference Room, 16:30-17:15
The Life and Poetry of Annasoltan Kekilova
Orhan Elmaz
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 16:00-17:00
This talk by Orhan Elmaz examines the life and poetry of Annasoltan Kekilova (1942-1983), a Turkmen poet whose writing engages questions of women’s lives, longing, homeland, and resistance. It places her work in the context of Soviet repression and argues for her importance as a compelling poetic voice that remains under-read and rarely heard.
Poetry reading by Peter Constantine and Eleni Kefala
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 17:00-18:00
Peter Constantine will read from My language has no bones, his poetry collection in progress, translated by Jake Syersack. Arvanitika is one of the severely endangered non-Greek oral languages of Greece. Peter grew up hearing it spoken near Mount Pendelikon and in a village between Corinth and Mycenae, and is almost certainly the last person writing in it. Since his uncle, the poet Yorgos Soukoulis, died in 2017, the language has closed around him ‘like an empty room’. What remains is a grammar of one: kept alive through self-dialogues, written for almost no one left who can read it.
Eleni Kefala reads from Direct Orient (2024), winner of the State Poetry Prize in Cyprus and the Academy of Athens G. Athanas Poetry Award (Greece), and shortlisted for the State Poetry Prize in Greece. Following a Cypriot woman’s journey from Birmingham to Athens in 1973, the book unfolds against a rich literary backdrop, weaving family and world history into a meditation on migration, conflict, memory, and women’s voices across time.
Multilingual poetry reading
Jordi Larios and others
Byre Theatre Auditorium, 19:00-20:30
To mark National Poetry Day, acclaimed Catalan poet Jordi Larios will read from his new collection, Thresholds. This will be followed by a reading by St Andrews staff and students of verse in languages such as Arabic, French, German, Russian, Swedish and Esperanto (with English translation).
Friday 2 October 2026
Resisting AI: a zine-making workshop
Paola Ruffo
Byre Conference Room, 10:00-12:00
As AI advances, many people are rediscovering a desire for lo-fi, personal, handcrafted art. Zine-making has seen a resurgence, as artists and communities push back against the growing dominance of AI in creative spaces.
In this workshop, we’ll explore zine-making as a form of creative resistance. Through collage, poetry, and imperfect self-expression, participants will reflect on what resisting AI means to them while crafting in community with others.
‘Roots’ workshop
Anisha Minocha
Byre Conference Room, 17:00-18:30
How can iterations of the sacred shape our own relationship to the environment? Based on Indian philosophical thought, this interdisciplinary workshop explores ecopoetics through art, myth and the written word. By paying attention to recycling as a mode of rebirth, participants will be encouraged to challenge Eurocentric narratives around waste and sustainability.
The Language of Laughter
A Bright Club stand-up event hosted by Bobby May, School of Psychology
Byre Studio Theatre, 19:00-20:00
A comedy night like no other! Five university experts swap lectures for laughter under the watchful eye of their comedy mentor and our MC for the evening, Dr Bobby May. Bright Club is a lively evening where curiosity meets quick wit. Come for the comedy, stay for the ideas – and leave having laughed a lot.
