Fascinating Fandom: The Detailed Demographics of UK Anime Fans - Minamicon 24 (2018)

The next panel I ran after FSN2017 was at Minamicon 24, in March 2018. It presents a lot of the same data as was given in the FSN paper, but expands upon it to make the most of the time slot. As with my previous Minamicon panel, this ran on Sunday morning to another packed room but with markedly fewer hungover people and me feeling a lot less sick with nerves! It's just as informal and irreverent as the previous year though!

There are subtitles on this video but after the first 20 minutes or so they revert to Youtube's automatically generated ones, which aren't the best things ever due to audience participation and my own bizarre accent. I'm in the process of updating them to be more accurate but I haven't had a lot of time recently! I'll post an update when they're ready.

Mapping the Generations of Anime Fandom in the UK - FSN2017

The next talk I delivered relating to my research was at the Fan Studies Network Conference, held at the University of Huddersfield in June 2017. It consisted of an expanded analysis of the demographic data I got from my questionnaire, revisited Azuma's generations of otaku, and revised the proposals about anime fandom generations in the UK I made back in 2012.

No-one had any questions to ask at the Q&A panel afterwards but I did have some very interesting talks with other academics in attendance afterwards, which was fantastic!

Here's a link to the first panel I ran at Amecon, "The Changing Face of British Anime Fandom".

And here's a link to the paper I subsequently delivered at the Manga Movies Project Symposium at the University of East Anglia, "From Weird to Wired: The Internet and 'Fourth Generation' Anime Fandom".

The State of Anime Fandom in the UK - Minamicon 23 (2017)

Continuing my updates of panels and talks that I've run in the past few years is "The State of Anime Fandom in the UK", a panel I ran at Minamicon 23 in March 2017. It was the first panel I ran following the closure of my quantitative research into anime fandom in the UK - from March 2016 until February 2017, I ran an online questionnaire that was designed to give me a snapshot of UK anime fandom, looking at fan demographics, preferences, entry points into fandom, and what other aspects of Japanese culture fans were interested in.

The panel presents my results in very broad terms as I didn't have time to show a full meta-analysis, but there were some interesting results nonetheless. The tone is also very informal, as it was held on the Sunday morning of the con when many people were a bit hungover and I was feeling a bit unwell due to nerves!

Many thanks to Batale for filming the panel and putting it up online.

Fandom, Memes and Free Cake* - Amechibi 2015

It's been a good few years, but since the last time I posted a link to something fan studies-related I had done, I've run a few more talks and panels, so I figured I should update with those!

First is "Fandom, Memes and Free Cake*", a not-really-related-to-my-study panel I ran at Amechibi in April 2015. I find meme culture terribly interesting and thought this would be a fun topic to cover in a con setting, combining some actual academic discussion with the kind of irreverence that is entirely appropriate for meme culture.

The room was packed, which was a great result, though I did slightly worry that there might not be enough cake to go around... yes, despite the meme that says the cake is always a lie, I double-bluffed everyone and provided cake at the end! Well, it was my birthday after all...

Many thanks to Tom at Team Neko for filming the panel and putting it up online.

Once I finish my MPhil I'm toying with the idea of revisiting this at a future con, and possibly writing a book. We shall see...!