Relational Forms: Intercultural and Inter-Arts Dynamics in the Cultures of Ireland and Britain is largely derived from Irish Writing and Translation, one of the former research groups at IEI. A continued commitment to the study of Irish texts and cultural forms is signalled in the priority given to Ireland in the group's general designation; but the scope of the research is extended in more ways than those suggested by a title that encompasses the cultures of the British Isles. The group's practical and critical interest in translation is both subsumed and magnified in the sets of relations promised in the title; the earlier group's endorsement of translation as referring to more processes and transits than those of strict interlingual transfer is therefore confirmed and made more explicit in a thematic commitment to cultural transfer and to intermediality.

The group's research goals largely coincide with the following areas of academic inquiry:

1. the cultures of Ireland and Britain: relations and representations;

2. texts in transit 1: translations, appropriations, rewritings;

3. texts in transit 2: intermedial transfer; literature and the visual arts;

4. texts in transit 3: from page to stage; theatre and the polis;

5. texts in transit 4: time, space, experience; literature encounters biography, historiography, geography.

These research goals will be pursued, predominantly, by the following means:

1. organising conferences;

1.1. the opening and foremost example of this: the group has accepted the responsibility of organising the 2008 conference of IASIL, the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, which will take place in Portugal for the first time; this is the most important annual event, internationally, in the field of Irish Studies;the venue will be the Universidade do Porto; the dates are 28 July - 1 August 2008, and the theme is Home and Elsewhere: the Spaces of Irish Writing;

1.2. the group commits itself to organising one conference every year, on one or more of the thematic emphases highlighted above; as before, it will try to make this annual event intellectually attractive to academics with related interests in Portugal, and also to open it to cultural agents from outside the academic world;

2. participation in national and international conferences: the group will pursue this policy, favouring its members' presentation of their papers in contexts that ensure a significant impact on the relevant disciplinary domains;

3. publications: the group will pursue the policy of

3.1. publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals in the relevant areas of the Humanities;

3.2. promoting the publication of monographs and/or edited collections by its members, preferably with international publishers that secure a satisfactory circulation.

4. networking: the group will take due advantage of the possibilities for exchanges and joint projects that derive from the agreements and protocols that have recently been drafted between the Porto-based research groups and several European universities - in particular Berlin (FU), Utrecht, Murcia. This should involve mutual research visits and mutual contributions to publications. It is also expected to lead to jointly developed graduate programmes.

Team Members Maria Isabel da Cunha Donas Botto Rui Manuel Gomes de Carvalho Homem Teresa Louro Other Researchers Adriana Conceicao Silva Pereira Bebiano Nascimento Maria de Deus Duarte Maria Teresa Correia Casal Paulo Eduardo Carvalho Zuzanna Sanches

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