CFP Nine Worlds' Academia and Geek Culture Conference (4/1/14; London 8/8-10/14)

Sorry for the late posting:

Nine Worlds' Academia and Geek Culture Conference (8-10 August 2014)
full name / name of organization:
Nine Worlds
contact email:
sffacademic@nineworlds.co.uk
Academia and Geek Culture

Last year, the Nine Worlds convention hosted an academic conference. You can find the details of it at www.sffacademic.wordpress.com. This year, we’re intending to do it somewhat differently. Instead of having an academic conference in its own devoted room, we’ll be placing talks, panellists and other speakers in tracks on their own topic.

With that in mind, we’re inviting submissions for papers and suggested panels, as well as volunteers to talk on pre-organised panels. All areas of study surrounding ‘geek media’ are accepted – from video games to classic fantasy, and we welcome submissions from anyone who is a current student or has graduated with a degree in a relevant field. Talks will be ideally 20-30 minutes in length, and the standard panel time is 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Nine Worlds will take place in London (Heathrow) between the 8th and 10th of August 2014. Tickets are available for purchase on www.nineworlds.co.uk, and they will grant you access to the whole convention – not just the academic content.

Suggested areas of submission include:

- Video Games and the surrounding culture
- Board, Social and Role-playing Game
- Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature*
- Diversity and representation in geek culture
- ‘Geek’ film and TV
- Comics
- Religion/culture and geek culture
- Steampunk/other alternative history movements
- Fanfiction
- Science and its relation to geek media/culture

* We’re especially looking for some Game of Thrones content here.

Please ensure your paper/panel is suited to non-academics. Ideally, you may assume the audience has full knowledge of primary sources, but little secondary, so please take this into consideration. We intend to each session be accessible and understandable to those outside of the usual academic groups.

Please send a title, a 300 word abstract, your name and affiliation (university) to sffacademic@nineworlds.co.uk

The deadline for submissions is April 1st, 2014. This deadline is for abstracts only – the completed papers will be due mid-July.

Registration will be completed through the purchase of a ticket to the convention as a whole. Accommodation is available at the hotel, but should be booked separately by individual participants. All profits from the conference/convention will go to charity. Please do email if you have questions.

Nine Worlds deliberately tries to include parity of race, sexual orientation, genders and creeds as a part of its programming remit, wherever possible. We aim to follow this in our selection of panellists, and would also be interested in including papers or panels that address these issues. However, we are aware that some people do not want to discuss these as direct topics, and wish to be sensitive to this, so you will only be asked to speak on topics that you offer to.


By web submission at 02/13/2014 - 15:32