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Held at the University of London and organized by the London Centre of Interdisciplinary Research, the International Conference "Discourses on Motherhood" represents one of the most important matrifocal events of the year. This conference is inagurated this year with a plenary talk by Andrea O'Reilly, considered one of the founding scholars of mothering theories, and two members of MILA will be contributing to this matri-oriented agenda by stressing literature's importance in motherhood studies.  

Their panel will be coordinated by chair Emma Domínguez-Rué, and their papers are as follows:

• Elisa Fernández Rodríguez, Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) "The Mother-Daughter Divide: Maternal Relationships in Contemporary US Latinx Fiction"

• María Laura Arce Álvarez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) "Maternal Refugeetude and the Mother-Son Relationship in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous" 

Five of our team members (Laura Arce Álvarez, Eulalia Piñero Gil, Gala Arias Rubio, Anna Brígido Corachán and Lucía Aréjula Muñoz) will take part in the 36th Biennial Conference of EAAS held at the University of Bologna from September 1st to September 4th. There, a panel on motherhood studies will be presented where diverse mothering structures and maternal figures will be analyzed. The proposals offered by our researchers will provide those attending with an intersectional view of how maternal practices have been carried out in different centuries, cultures and communities. 

During the MESEA 14th Biennial Conference, two of our project members participated in a full matrifocal pannel titled "Revisiting Motherhood: Matrifocal Narratives with an Environmental and More-than-Human Focus" where they incorporated MILA's objectives into the ecocritical vision that MESEA proposed this year. Our PI, Laura Arce, was the chair of this pannel where three fundamental papers were included:

• Gala Arias Rubio (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain), "The Wolf Woman and the Mother Wolf"

• Mª Isabel Pérez-Ramos (University of Oviedo, Spain), "From Motherhood to Pollination: and EcoNarratological Analysis of Barbara Litkowski’s “Monarch Blue”"

• María Laura Arce (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain), "Queer Mothering and Nature in Carmen María Machado’s Short Story “Mothers”" 

Aditionally, another member of MILA, Anna Brígido-Corachán moderated as chair another pannel titled "Indigenous Biospheres: Relational Ontologies, Intergenerational Solidarity, and Earth-centered Perspectives in Contemporary Native American Literature" where she also presented her paper "“From the Birthing Waters to Air”: Transcorporeality and Environmental Ethics in the Poetry of Linda Hogan and Ofelia Zepeda". 

In the first edition of the MIRCAALT Young Scholars Doctoral Seminar, a panel on motherhood studies was conducted. There, several mothering schema and family structures were discussed which contributed to the creation of fruitful conversations on mother-daughter relationships, space for queer mothers in fiction and literary formats that matrifocal narratives adopt. 

MILA entered the annual Conference organized by PopMeC, the Association for US Popular Culture Studies, through the contributions of two of our young researchers. In both papers, our members proposed an analysis of two contemporary novels through matrifocal lenses, paying close attention to the fictional maternal figures and their practices.

• Aréjula Muñoz, Lucía. "The "ongoing song of care" in Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts or how to queer the mothering frontier" Frontiers and Un/Belongings in US American Culture, Universidad de Valladolid. November 24-26, 2025. 

• Fernández Rodríguez, Elisa. "The Revolution Begins at Home: Notions of Un/Belonging(s) in Carla Trujillo's What Night Brings" Frontiers and Un/Belongings in US American Culture, Universidad de Valladolid. November 24-26, 2025. 

In the 48th AEDEAN Conference, the objectives of our project were transmited through two matrifocal interventions that paid attention, among other issues related to motherhood studies, to the mothering exerted by fictional trans women. This focus coincides with the intersectional perspective that our project seeks to explore in matrifocal narratives. 

• Aréjula Muñoz, Lucía. "Of Trans Mothers and Daughters: Mothering Practices in The House of Impossible Beauties and Bad Girls" 48th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad del País Vasco. November 12-14, 2025. 

• Fernández Rodríguez, Elisa. "Women and Waste, Bodies and Borders: Sylvia Aguilar Zeleny's Trash" 48th AEDEAN Conference, Universidad del País Vasco. November 12-14, 2025.