Gibraltarian writer M. G. Sanchez recently visited Newcastle to take part in a public debate on whether writers and intellectuals should be engaging more with the Brexit process. The event was part of ‘Writers and Intellectuals on Britain and Europe, 1918-2018’, a conference organised by the University of Northumbria’s Department of English.

The debate was chaired by Professor Robert Eaglestone of Royal Holloway, University of London and the four invited speakers were Dr Kristian Shaw of the University of Lincoln, the novelists Fiona Shaw and Richard T. Kelly, and Dr Sanchez himself.

Also during the conference, Professor Ina Habermann of the University of Basel delivered a lecture in which she explored the Derridean concept of ‘hauntology’ in relation to M. G. Sanchez’s writing. Professor Habermann’s talk was entitled ‘Gibraltarian Hauntologies in the Fiction of M. G. Sanchez.’

‘I had a very interesting and rewarding time in Newcastle,’ Dr Sanchez commented to YGTV. ‘I learned a lot from the other speakers at the conference, and I also felt that the members of the audience were genuinely interested in Gibraltar’s political situation and the linguistic and socio-cultural idiosyncrasies of our identity.’

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