The MERLIT project at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) consists of a core team of six researchers. In five exemplary yet representative subprojects, they study the reciprocity between literary forms and hegemonic narratives of valorization across five centuries of literary-artistic production in Anglophone contexts. A sixth work package offers tangential and embedding reflections in a literary-historical overview. The project has grown to accommodate several associated research projects which testify to the urgency of the questions it raises in, from and for the Humanities and beyond. All six core researchers as well as associated researchers have presented their work at international symposia and conferences in 2024 and 2025 and will continue to do so in the upcoming phase. As the individual work packages cover a range of genres, periods and contexts, the individual researchers have built networks for their respective subprojects.
At VUB, the MERLIT team has initiated an ongoing series of Theory and Methodology Workshops that engage with the different theoretical strands informing the research in the six work packages: Concepts of meritocratic thought, the history of literature and ideas and their transfer as well as intelligent approaches to form. These workshops, some of which feature international experts, regularly attract participants beyond the project team. In September 2025, the MERLIT team organised the international conference "Writing Meritocracy: Figurations of a Concept Across Literary History and Contexts of Literary Production" (18-20 Sept 2025), at which meritocratic concepts were explored in literary traditions and examples from several continents, linguistic contexts and centuries. An edited volume emerging from "Writing Meritocracy" is currently in production. This conference has been an important milestone in the team's efforts to mainstream reflections on variations of meritocratic narratives as subjects of, as well as determining factors in, literary cultures across the globe.
Beyond organising their own formats at VUB, MERLIT members individually teamed up with colleagues to organise literary conventions and symposia and panels (BAAHE Conference 2024, VAL Conference 2025, Global Modernist Studies Network Symposium 2025, ACLALS), in the context of which the MERLIT research could be mainstreamed: The 2024 edition of the BAAHE conference explored the hegemonic role of English as a (trans)portable container or vehicle for cultral concepts in the world. assumed a prominent space. The VAL-Day offered explorations of gender anxieties in literature and culture and featured a number of contributions on social mobility, conceptualisations of valorization and merit through the prism of changing approaches to gender. All these engagements lead to publications in which the MERLIT project will leave an impression.
While data collection is still underway, first publications are under contract and can be expected to appear in 2026.
Conference presentations, publications, and other milestones can be found on the regularly updated project website merlit.vub.be.
