16th Biennial Conference of the Association for Low Countries Studies (ALCS) 22–24 June 2026 | University of York, UK

In the heat of the English summer, we gathered at the historic Heslington Hall at the University of York for the Delta Dialogues, the 16th Biennial ALCS Conference. The event brought over thirty participants from ten countries, including the USA, Hungary, Poland, and Germany, alongside the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Contributors are warmly invited to submit their work in the form of an article to our academic journal, Dutch Crossing. Full submission details can be found on the Dutch Crossing pages

Over three days, we explored how nature, language, and power intertwine across the Neerlandophone world and its global colonial legacies. Our discussions crossed boundaries of time and geography: from the icy canals of the Little Ice Age to contemporary climate fiction and the vulnerable coastlines of the Caribbean.The Delta Dialogues demonstrated once again how the ALCS plays a pivotal role in exploring and facilitating transnational connections, both in terms of thematic content and in attracting young scholars who connect the Low Countries to the rest of the world through both the Dutch and English languages.

Keynote Insights

The tone of the conference was set by Eric Mijts’ (University of Aruba) keynote address, which challenged traditional anthropocentric and Eurocentric views of nature. Mijts traced how the Low Countries’ deeply ingrained culture of ‘mastering’ and naming nature was systematically exported to colonized territories. Focusing on the islands of the Caribbean, Mijts raised critical questions of hierarchy and power: Who defines biodiversity? Who names nature? Whose knowledge counts? He argued passionately that sustainable environmental conservation can only be achieved when local communities are empowered to advocate for their ecosystems using their own native languages, cultural frameworks, and indigenous knowledge systems.

On day two (with both outdoor and indoor temperatures rising steadily to match the urgency of the conference theme) Catherine Levesque (William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia) grounded the dialogue in the very materiality of the Dutch landscape. Her address focused on the elements of the delta, water, sand, peat, and clay, examining how these humble substrates have historically mediated Dutch identity, art, and ecological thinking.

Major Themes

The common thread that emerged across the panels was the historically prevailing Dutch narrative of a heroic triumph over an ever-dangerous sea. However, the discussions repeatedly highlighted a profound paradigm shift toward living with water rather than fighting against it. In the early modern sessions, scholars explored colonial mapping in Suriname, the biblical language connected with wetland reclamation in the English Fens, and Peter Paul Rubens’ politically charged representation of the River Nile.

By contrast, the modern panels painted a picture of deep ecological anxiety. Drawing on contemporary children's literature and poetry, presenters noted a distinct turn toward posthumanist and relational perspectives, where the sea is reframed as a living entity that actively shapes how humans view their past, present, and future.

Presentations and discussions in the climate anxiety sessions explored how contemporary novelists and poets give voice to a ‘collective angst’, the fear of the disappearance of the Dutch nation-state and its collective identity beneath rising sea levels. Authors like Eva Meijer and Antoine Heijmans, for example, deliberately fracture traditional confidence in engineering and water management, highlighting the limits of human self-reliance.

Landscapes of Conflict

Landscapes at this conference rarely emerged as neutral scenery; instead, nature was repeatedly shown to be encoded with moral, political, and historical meaning. Virginia Girard of Columbia University (USA) showed how early modern artist Hieronymus Bosch encoded punishment into his landscapes by placing execution sites specifically along coastlines, representing a literal and spiritual limbo between land and sea. Orsolya Réthelyi’s paper (ELTE, Budapest) on Dutch-Hungarian cultural transfer beautifully illustrated how the image of Dutch water management shifted over a century, evolving from an early 1920s metaphor of humanitarian generosity and resilience into a modern, complex narrative of shared climate vulnerability and strained solidarity. Lotte Jensen highlighted the recent ‘memory boom’ in the Netherlands surrounding historical floods (such as the 1953 disaster). She argued that these commemorations are not merely about looking backward, but are actively deployed to build ‘cultural resilience’ in the face of future climate threats.

A Continued Conversation

The Delta Dialogues opened up a vital conversation across centuries and borders, highlighting that the language we use in connection with our landscape shapes not only how we remember our history, but how we hope to survive in the future. Check the conference publication in Dutch Crossing.

The Delta Dialogues were kindly sponsored by the Taalunie, Flanders House, and the University of York. We are grateful for their continued interest and support. We thank the IVN and Anne Sluijs for keeping our community lively and informed.  We extend a special thank you to Dr Adam Sammut and Dr Freya Sierhuis of York University for their organisational input and hospitality.