Friday 5 February and Saturday 6 February 2027
St Hugh's College
Register via Eventbrite.
Packing a Punch: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Humour and Power
Is it ever just a joke? Laughter can legitimise authority, unsettle hierarchies, forge collective identities, expose the limits of power. Humour can ignite debate, foster apathy, solidify ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups. It can evoke a whole host of emotional responses beyond amusement: joy, harmony, relief, but also scorn, discomfort, fear. In short, the meanings in and of humour are far from straightforward. There is power in humour and humour in power, too.
This interdisciplinary conference—timed to coincide with the exhibition Between Laughter and Tears: The Political Cartoons of Ella Baron (White Box, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities)—aims to examine the complex relationships between humour and power across academic disciplines, historical periods, cultural contexts, and media forms.
Preliminary Programme
Friday, 5 February 2026
10:00-10:30 Welcome Coffee and Introduction
10:30-12:30 PANEL 1: HUMOUR & POLITICAL CRISIS
Better than the copy: the politics of humour in 1980s Italy
Andrea Brondino – University of Manchester
Behold a Wonder! Armando Ianucci’s Pandemic Poetics
Margaret Kean – University of Oxford
Memeing the Dictator: Ridicule, Reappropriation, and the Postdigital Public Sphere of Bangladesh’s July Uprising
Shanjida Nowshin Chowdhury – North South University
“I Like My ICE CRUSHED”: The Meme-ification of US Protest Signs in the Age of Algorithms
Emily Brady – University of Oxford
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:00 PANEL 2: HUMOUR & RACE
Satirical Engagements with Black Bodily Value and British Slave Compensation in the Nineteenth Century
Klarke Stricklen – University of Oxford
Humour, Power, and the Testimony of Slavery in the Federal Writers’ Project Interviews with Formerly Enslaved People
Luke de Lisle – University of Oxford
Tactical Frivolity and Race in Victorian Women’s Writing
Lindsey N. Chappell – Georgia Southern University
3:00-3:30 Coffee
3:30-5:00 PANEL 3: HUMOUR & LANGUAGE
Double echolalia. Rhetorical implications of satire: Italian examples
Serena Vandi – Trinity College Dublin
Translating the Comic Turk: Humour, Power and Cultural Representation in Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
Yalçin Aydın – Hacettepe University
Irony Lost… in Translation? Humour, Language and Power in the French Dubbing and Subtitling of Blackadder
Paola Scarpini – University of Warwick
5:00-6:30 Visit exhibition “Between Laughter and Tears: The Political Cartoons of Ella Baron” (White Box, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities)
6:30-8:00 KEYNOTE PANEL (Theatre, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities)
Speakers TBC.
Saturday, 6 February 2026
9:00-11:00 PANEL 4: HUMOUR & IDENTITY
Humour, Comedy and Social Identity: Towards a Theoretical Understanding
Sharon Lockyer and Simon Weaver – Brunel University
Who Gets to be “Just a Comedian”? Gender Identity and the Politics of Political Stand-Up Comedy
Amber Kempynck – Ghent University
Laughing Ourselves into Being: Situated Humour, Collective Self-Governance, and the Making of Modern National Identity
Shafag Dadashova – ADA University
Who Gets to be Funny? Humour, Reputation and Political Power
Viktorija Völker – Universität Tübingen
11:00-11:30 Coffee
11:30-1:00 PANEL 5: HUMOUR & PERFORMANCE
“Here is our Rector”: Humour, Reputation, and Authority in Early Modern Venetian Crete
Marco Pakas – University of Oxford
The Double-Take Fake: Parody, Power, and Laughter in Late-Nineteenth-Century France
Jessica Wardhaugh – University of Warwick
Giving Satire a Face: Fictional Persona and Satirical Performance, from Bickerstaff to Binface
Adam James Smith – York St John University
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:30 PANEL 6: HUMOUR & STAND-UP
The Precarious Microphone: Disability Humour and Comic Authority
Melina Malli – University of Oxford
On Those Who Found the Words: Stand-Up Comedy in Wartime Russia
Daria Ganzenko – ZZF Potsdam
The Market Just Can’t Take a Joke: Comic Labour, Cancel Culture and the Contradictions of Market Dependence
Alex Sutton – Oxford Brookes
3:30-3:45 Conclusion
Humour Network, Humour Network
