Dear friends,

We (Alissa Mello and Cariad Astles) are calling all thinkers, artists and scholars who research and write about puppetry, object and material performance!

The 2025 International Federation of Theatre Research conference is in Cologne, Germany, between 9th and 13th June 2025.

The theme is Carnival.

We are proposing a wave of puppetry scholarship/intervention in the conference through a Puppet Love Bomb. Many of the contributions and presentations in IFTR conferences take place through thematic working groups. There are 26 working groups and it would be amazing to see puppetry represented in each and every one. The range of possible interventions is open; you can read more about the conference on this link: https://iftr.org/conference

Attached is a list of the groups with their corresponding due dates and links to their pages for information on how to submit – IFTR_WG_2025.

While proposals are typically due 15 January 2025 NOTE there is a travel bursary via application that is due 22 November 2024; all details can be found here https://iftr.org/conference/bursaries. For the bursary one will need to submit an abstract with title, a referee letter and complete an online application.

Please join us in Köln/Cologne in June and let us know if you would like to participate in the Puppet Love Bomb.

We are sending this now so that any of you interested in applying for the travel bursary can do so now, but we will contact you again in December to see if it is possible to fill all the working groups with puppetry-themed presentations.

Warm wishes to all of you

Cariad and Alissa