Our SF&F Academia Track will host a series of lectures, discussions and paper presentation by students, researchers and academics who study Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Saturday

10.00 – 10.30, Hel Gurney – SFF before SFF: Margaret Cavendish’s Fantastical World

10.45 – 11.15, Meriel Patrick - Making myths: the theology and science fiction of C. S. Lewis

11.45 – 12.10, Ashton Spacey – Gayle Rubin, Gay Wizards and Denying a Paradigm

12.15 – 12.40, Sasha McKenna - Understanding Ethical Intuitions Through Superheroes

12.45 – 1.10, Matthew Pocock - Synthetic Biology: A Convergence of Fact and Fiction

1.30 – 2.45, Jutta Weldes and Christina Rowley - The Politics of Violence and Security in the Whedonverse

3.15 – 3.45, Dr Andrew Crome - Discussing Religion and Doctor Who: Faith, Science Fiction and Academic Research

3.55 – 4.30, Tara Isabella Burton – Hadaly: The First Android

5.00 – 6.15, Dr Martin Arnold – Thor: The God of New Technologies?

6.45 – 7.25, Professor Marion Gibson – Wicker Men, Straw Dogs and Fireflies: Celts and Others in 70s Cinema and ‘Safe’

Sunday

10.00 – 10.25, Maria Costello - The 48k ZX Spectrum: Material culture and early home computer game history in Britain

10.30 – 10.55, Antony Keen - Genre Sensibility in the First Three Novels of Iain Banks

11.00 – 11.25, Philip Gaydon - “Real Adventures for Real Heroes”: Does Dungeons and Dragons Deliver What it Promises?

11.45 – 1.00, Professor Ian Stewart - The Deterministic Monkey Theorem or Chaos in L-Space

1.30 – 2.45, Dr Jack Cohen - The Design of Alien Ecologies: The Invention of Reality-Based Aliens

3.15 – 4.30, Edmund Weiner – Tolkien and the English Language

5.00 – 5.30, Jonathan Key - Virgin Territory: Seven of Nine and the Complex Negotiation of Female Cyborg Subjectivity on Star Trek: Voyager

5.40 – 6.15, Ewan Kirkland - Monogamy, Heteronormativity and Compulsory Heterosexuality in Recent Science Fiction Cinema

6.45 – 7.15, Chase Leipert - War of the Realities: The Conflict of Perceptions in the Fantasies of Philip K. Dick, with Special Reference to The Man In The High Castle, Dr. Bloodmoney and Valis

7.25 – 8.00, Gareth Brown and Nic Beuret - Dancing on the Grave: New Utopian Wastelands and Social Movements Against and Beyond Capital