The Fan Studies Network

We are a network for fan studies scholars around the world! This is a place where calls for papers can be shared, conference/symposium news distributed and connections with other fan studies academics can be forged.

The network was founded and is co-chaired by:

Lucy Bennett graduated with a PhD in online fandom at JOMEC, Cardiff University, where she is a lecturer in media audiences. Her research examines audiences and their use of the internet, with particular focuses on fandom, music and social media. Her work appears in the journals New Media & Society, Transformative Works and Cultures, Participations, Celebrity Studies, Cinema Journal, Social Semiotics, and Continuum, and she has co-edited two books: Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics and Digital Society (with Bertha Chin and Bethan Jones, Peter Lang, 2015) and Seeing Fans: Representations of Fandom in Media and Popular Culture (with Paul Booth, Bloomsbury, 2016). She is also a music writer, conducting interviews with bands and musicians, for God is in the TV. You can email her at bennettl@cardiff.ac.uk.

Tom Phillips is a Lecturer in Humanities in the Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities at UEA, where he achieved his BA and MA before completing his AHRC-funded PhD thesis (‘Fandom and Beyond: Online Community, Culture, and Kevin Smith Fandom’) in 2013. His research interests include the study of online fandom, audience and reception studies, and the cultural, economic, and political concerns of the UK videogames industry. Tom is currently writing a monograph on performance, promotion, and fandom within women’s professional wrestling, considering case studies from the UK, US, and Japan. You can email him at t.phillips@uea.ac.uk

The network board members are:

Bertha Chin graduated with a PhD from JOMEC, Cardiff University. Her thesis explored the notion of community boundaries and the construction of fan celebrities in cult and scifi television fandom, particularly The X-Files, Angel and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Social Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology. Her research interests also include fan labour, crowdfunding, anti-fandom and transcultural fandom of East Asian popular culture. Her works appear in Social Semiotics, Intensities: The Journal of Cult Film and Television, Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television, with forthcoming publications in Participations, Transformative Works and Cultures, and M/C Journal. She is also a contributor to the On/Off Screen blog. You can email her at bertha.chin@gmail.com.

Bethan Jones is an independent scholar who graduated with a PhD from JOMEC, Cardiff University. Her PhD, which took the form of published works, focused on dislike, hatred and toxicity in awarded a PhD by Published Works by Cardiff University in 2021. Her research interests include cult television, nostalgia, anti-fandom, gender and participatory culture. Her work appears in New Media & Society, The Journal of Fandom Studies and Transformative Works and Cultures as well as edited collections for Palgrave, Routledge and NYU Press. She is co-editor, with Lucy Bennett and Berth Chin, of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (Peter Lang, 2015) and is also a successful micro fiction writer and poet. You can email her at bethanvjones@hotmail.com

Richard McCulloch is Senior Lecturer in Media and Film, and joined the University of Huddersfield in January 2016. He has held previous appointments at five other UK universities, most notably Regent’s University London, where he was responsible for overseeing the design of a new Film Studies degree pathway in 2015. He studied Film and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, where he later went on to complete his MA and PhD. His doctoral research looked at reputation and discourses of quality in relation to Pixar Animation Studios, and he is in currently updating and expanding on his ideas for a forthcoming monograph. You can email him at R.McCulloch@hud.ac.uk.

Rebecca Williams is Senior Lecturer in Communication, Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Glamorgan. She teaches on modules on Digital Media & Society and Media Audiences & Fandom. She has published work on fandom in journals such as Continuum, Popular Communication and Participations and on TV audiences more broadly in Television & New Media and Media History. She has published four books; two monographs, Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality & Participatory Cultures (2020, Amsterdam University Press) and Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity & Self-Narrative (2015, Bloomsbury) and the edited collections Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings & Resurrections in Fan Cultures (2018, University of Iowa Press) and Torchwood Declassified (2013, I.B. Tauris). You can email her at rebecca.williams@southwales.ac.uk.