The International Rhetoric Workshop (IRW) is an international workshop for emerging scholars and PhD students in rhetoric. The workshop offers a space for early career scholars in the global rhetoric community to engage each other’s work and to connect with internationally renowned scholars. Established and advanced career scholars are also encouraged to apply!

Held over the course of three days, IRW consists of: workshop sessions in which participants review and discuss drafts of ongoing research with faculty; an opening keynote address on each day from internationally renowned scholars; and faculty discussion panels engaging with topics relevant to the theme and to workshop participants’ research.

International Rhetoric Workshop

Brent Lucia

“The IRW provides an amazing blend of scholarship, social experience, and learning opportunities. I cannot say enough about how transformative this workshop can be for young scholars in the field.”

Lisa Flores

“What a fabulous opportunity to think and learn and connect together.”

Amanda Adam

“IRW was a great first academic experience. The groups for the pods were well thought out, allowing us to receive relevant and specific feedback on our papers, while the keynote speakers provided us with new and challenging insights. To top it off, IRW included a well-organized social program that invited us all to connect with each other, making it a perfect introduction to the rhetoric community.”

Shuzhen Huang

“I enjoyed the collegial culture of IRW and the constructive feedback I received for my work!”

2024 Workshop

Dubrovnik, Croatia; 18-20 June 2024

The 2024 workshop brought together rhetoric scholars from around the world for 3 fruitful days of dialogue, discussion, and conversation. Click below for a fuller description and snapshots of the event.

On-site IRW 2024

Said about IRW...

  • Jessica Enoch

    The International Rhetoric Workshop offers participants the unmatched experience of international collaboration and learning within rhetorical studies. As a workshop leader, I was deeply impressed with the work students brought to our meetings and their eagerness and willingness to rethink their projects given the feedback of their peers. Most importantly, though, working with scholars from around the world allows participants to gain new perspective on their scholarship and to learn how rhetorical studies takes shape in contexts beyond their own. I learned so much. There is no doubt I will encourage junior scholars to participate in this event in 2020!

  • Ryan Solomon

    I can’t recommend the International Rhetoric Workshop highly enough. It provides a unique opportunity for global interaction at an intimate level. The workshop offers an experience of intellectual community where you can focus closely together on developing a project towards publication, where you can get to know other scholars, and where you can engage across interdisciplinary lines.

  • Elizabeth Weiser

    The IRW was certainly one of the very best organized and creatively arranged workshop experiences I have been a part of. The variety of scholars from multiple nations and multiple disciplines taught me, as a faculty member, equally as much as anything I may have contributed to the very talented graduate students, and the opportunities for informal conversation made each day both career-enhancing and fun.

  • Jens E. Kjelden

    IRW is a well planned and organized workshop. Spending time and exchanging ideas with these bright young scholars from different continents is an inspiring and uplifting experience.

  • Christian Kock

    The International Rhetoric Workshop 2018 brought together an impressive 50-odd PhD students in Rhetoric from c. 10 different countries all over the world. It was my privilege to participate as faculty and leader of one of the “pods” of PhD students. These all presented scholarly work of a high caliber, which was then submitted to intense feedback and discussion. The whole structure and setup of the workshop, with keynote presentations, panels, and discussions in the “pods,” interlaced with warm and friendly social and cultural events, was extremely well prepared and turned out to be wonderfully useful and rewarding for all, PhD students and faculty alike. Also, networks and personal connections were formed and strengthened during the workshop, significantly expanding the intellectual horizon of all involved.... Future workshops along the same lines will greatly benefit the international community of scholars in rhetoric – a discipline dedicated to the study and preservation of democratic processes.

Endorsements