Peers Symposium 2026

2026 marks another year of our annual Peers Symposium, celebrated in conjunction with 100 years of Catalan at the University of Liverpool.

Founded in 1923 by the then Gilmour Chair of Spanish, Professor Edgar Allison Peers, and appearing originally under the title Bulletin of Spanish Studies, the BHS was the first journal in Hispanism published in the UK. In 1949, it was renamed Bulletin of Hispanic Studies to reflect its wider remit, and has grown since then, now publishing ten issues per year.

Since its founding by Allison Peers, the BHS has gone from strength to strength over the years, and a foray into its archives provides a fascinating glimpse of how Hispanism as a discipline has grown and taken shape in the UK from the first half of the twentieth century to the present day. Some of the early volumes in the 1930s, for instance, capture responses to the Spanish Civil War, including special sections that the journal ran in the 1930s, such as ‘A Diary of the Civil War’ and ‘Documents of the Civil War’, which followed the Spanish Civil War as it happened.

The founder of the journal, Edgar Allison Peers, was one of the most influential figures in UK Hispanism in the early- to mid-twentieth century. Allison Peers was the second holder of the Gilmour Chair in Spanish at the University of Liverpool, a post to which he was appointed in 1922. The following year saw the publication of the first issue of the BHS, with a Foreword by the Spanish Ambassador, Alfonso Merry del Val, highlighting the positive values of the Spanish language as the ‘golden key’ to the literatures and cultures of the Hispanic world, followed by a range of contributions including scholarly articles, book reviews and reports.

If you would like any further information, do not hesitate to contact us at catalancentenary@liverpool.ac.uk