mfm - 32nd Manchester Phonology Meeting

The 32nd
Manchester Phonology Meeting

With a special session

featuring Invited speakers to be confirmed

Thursday 27th - Saturday 29th May 2027

To be held in-person (with no online participation) in Manchester, England.

Organised through a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester and elsewhere.

For information about the mfm and its history and background, see the mfm homepage.

There will also be a separately-organised Fringe Workshop on Wednesday 26th May, held near the main mfm venue, entitled

Phonology in Poetry

organised by Marc van Oostendorp and Chris Golston
(more details will be forthcoming about this soon)

background || call for papers || special session || organisers

Background

We are pleased to announce the initial plans for our Thirty-Second Manchester Phonology Meeting (32mfm). The mfm is the UK's biennial phonology conference, with an international set of organisers. It has been held in Manchester in late May since 1993. The 32mfm will be in-person in Manchester (which is central in the UK, with excellent international transport connections). The conference will be located just south of the city centre and will be easily accessible by public transport or on foot. We have thought long and hard about it, and we have concluded that we will not be able to run the conference in a hybrid fashion - that is, there will be no option for online participation.

The meeting has become a key conference for phonologists from all over the world, where anyone who declares themselves to be interested in phonology can submit an abstract on anything phonological in any phonological framework. In an informal atmosphere, we discuss a broad range of topics, including the phonological description of languages, issues in phonological theory, aspects of phonological acquisition and implications of phonological change.

At the last mfm (in 2025), the conference fee (covering general conference costs, coffee and biscuits, midday and evening meals, but not accommodation) was GBP 225.00, with a reduction to GBP 115.00 for students and unwaged participants (and it was possible to opt out of evening meals and therefore not pay for them). We expect that the fees will need to rise by a smallish amount for 2027, but we will keep the rise as low as possible.

If you would like to get a feeling for the conference series, you could take a look at the website for last year's 31mfm, and at the mfm homepage, which includes lots of information about the mfm conference series.

Advice on how best to travel to Manchester and on where to stay will be posted on this website in due course.

Call for papers [PRELIMINARY INFORMATION]

There will be no obligatory conference theme for the 32mfm - abstracts on anything phonological will be welcome.

The full call for papers will be issued during late November or early December 2026 - this is just preliminary information (we hope it will give you enough information to start preparing an abstract if you would like to). Once the full call for papers is ready, we will publicise it.

The deadline for abstracts is planned to be in the middle of January 2027.

Abstracts will need to be no longer than one side of A4 (or 'American letter'), with 2.5cm or one inch margins, single-spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12, and with normal character spacing. All examples and references in the abstract will need to be included on the one single page, but it will be enough, when referring to previous work, to cite "Author (Date)" in the body of the abstract (you will not need to give the full reference at the end of the abstract).

No-one may submit more than one single-authored abstract, as this allows more people to take part in the conference. You may submit one single-authored abstract and one jointly-authored abstract (or two jointly-authored abstracts), but it is unlikely that anyone will be offered two opportunities to speak.

All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by four members of the organising committee and advisory board. You can read about the abstract selection process here.

If you would like to see which kinds of abstracts have been successful in the past, you could consult the previous mfm's abstract booklet, available here. Short abstracts (less than a full page) are rarely successful as they typically do not include enough information to judge their worth. A good abstract indicates what the data and/or problem or issue is clearly and does not just promise an analysis, but sets out what it is.

We will aim to finalise the programme, and to contact everyone who submits an abstract by the end of February 2027, or as soon to that point as possible.

Special Session

A special themed session is being organised for Friday 28th May by members of the organising committee and the advisory board. This will feature invited speakers (to be advertised soon) and will allow for open discussion when contributions from the audience will be welcome.

Organisers

Organising Committee
The first named is the convenor and main organiser - if you have any queries about the conference, feel free to get in touch (patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk).

Patrick Honeybone (University of Edinburgh)
Ricardo Bermudez-Otero (University of Manchester)
Patrycja Strycharczuk (University of Manchester)