A few days left to submit your 500-word abstract for the Trans-Asian Transcultural Fandom Symposium 🫰 Deadline 📆 Feb 1 Find out more ▶️ transasianfan.wordpress.com We welcome your submissions 🫶 #CallForPapers #CFP #Fandom #FanStudies #AcademicSky #TransculturalFandom

I will be looking for an RA soon as my amazing postdoc has got a permanent role on our team. I will be looking for an emerging Māori researcher who has a social science background preferably :) dm me if you know of anyone or want to kōrero

My PhD in Internet Studies was recently conferred by @curtinuniversity.bsky.social, so I'm thrilled to be starting 2026 as *Dr* Rachel Berryman! 🎓🥳 My PhD thesis, "Analysing Virtual Influencers", is now available online - you can download it here: hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937... 🧵Summary below:

🇦🇺 Really important piece by my @qutdmrc.bsky.social colleague @antmandan.bsky.social in @aunz.theconversation.com on the ways that teenagers can protect themselves from the incredible damage to their lives that @albomp.bsky.social’s impending #SocialMediaBan will wreak.

This free online event hosted by @newcastleyouth.bsky.social is happening tomorrow (Nov 19) at 2pm AWST/5pm AEDT! Join this expert panel discussing young people's selfie cultures and the short documentary ‘Filtered Reality’ - registration via the link below! 🤳✨

📢 Call for Papers! AJEC invites abstracts for a special issue on children’s perspectives in their digital childhoods 🌍💻 📅 Abstracts due: Fri, 31 Oct 2025 📧 [email protected] Susan Danby, | [email protected] Irina Silva

We're looking for a new colleague in Media and Creative Technologies at the University of Waikato (L or SL level). Feel free to ask me any questions you might have, and circulate to anyone relevant! elhs.fa.ap1.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

tbh I think Microsoft is going to blink right before October 14, and if they don’t… well, that’s a very, very bad decision on their part.

and here we go: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/...

My book is out! 💗 Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity and Coming of Age in Videogames is a 6-year-long labour of love for young adult stories, teen heroines in videogames and unnoticed girly game histories. Thank you @livvy.itch.io for the beautiful cover! www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Nearly 100 years after her death, Oxford’s first female Indigenous scholar honoured

If you’re 18 or older, and have purchased makeup or beauty products based on your fandom (e.g licensed tie-ins or fan-run brands, small businesses, etc), my friend and colleague, Suzanne Scott is looking for you to answer a short survey with an opt-in for a follow up interview.

There is a tiny independent bookshop that specialises in romance that’s opened in Remuera. Went there today with Ms 21, just delightful. A great selection & a lovely spot to visit. enamouredbooks.co.nz highly recommended in these trying times.

Our opening policy position reads:

I'm really excited that a collection of fascinating work on fandom, fans and AI that @suzannerblack.bsky.social and I co-edited is out today in the new volume of @journal.transformativeworks.org - and as the journal's first 'New Currents' section! Read our editorial here doi.org/10.3983/twc....

Call for Abstracts: 2026 CDCS Symposium “Good Vibes Only? How Affects and Emotions Are Mediated for Justice in Digital Culture” www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/...

And a reminder that _Algorithms of Resistance_ is fully #openaccess, so can be read by anyone, right now(!): direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

✨I’m recruiting for a research project on game monetisation!✨ I’m keen to chat to game devs about how monetisation shapes the dev process. Interviews will be 60mins via Zoom. To learn more, head to bit.ly/40mOB3f if you'd like to participate, shoot me a DM or email [email protected] 😊

How do platforms shape the way we see, share & react to images? Join React & Respond, international conference on image cultures under platform capitalism, October 2–4. Open to all, register now: www.zhdk.ch/veranstaltun... @bildoperationen.bsky.social @zhdk.bsky.social @zkk-zurich.bsky.social

Glad to share my new publication in The Sociological Review: "Queer milestones: Intergenerational relations and youth transitions of Chinese queer female students residing overseas" (open access). doi.org/10.1177/0038...

My department - Psychology at UoA - is advertising for a 2.5 year fixed-term "Māori or Pacific lecturer in clinical psychology": Closes 20 August.

The Sims (2000)

Now that the ink is dry, I’m thrilled to share that I’ve officially signed the contract for my first academic book with University of California Press! I feel incredibly lucky and honored that @michellelipinski.bsky.social reached out after encountering my dissertation—we immediately

Don't forget! We are still accepting submissions (through 01/01/2026) for our upcoming special issue on Latin American Fandoms! See the full CFP here:

Huge props to @researchbrb.bsky.social who not only co-organised and co-hosted a whole event on Virtual Influencers, but also gave ab absolutely kick-ass final talk in the event, showcasing the depth and maturing of her own work on Virtual Influencers!

Super excited about this free upcoming online event "Virtual Influencers in the Asia Pacific", happening on Tuesday 08 April, 1400-1700hrs AWST (GMT+8). 🥳 For more info, including registration (essential!), event schedule and presenter bios, head to ierlab.com/virtual-infl...

It's Electric Zine Maker! alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zin...

Affect in fandom is out! 🥳 We LOVED working with authors on this volume on fandom, transmedia and games. This collection tackles creativity & content made by fans - their history AND their future (e.g. sustainable design). Download for free! 💜 #fanstudies library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

What is your favorite academic research on YouTube? I’m working on a list (for its belated 20th birthday 🎂) and would love some recommendations #commsky

Call for chapters for an edited volume published by Amsterdam University Press, tentatively titled Cozy Media. The book will investigate the various meanings of coziness across media. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ cozymedia.net/call-for-pap...

Thrilled to finally be able to reveal the cover of my new book - An Academic Affair, the story of two Anne-and-Gilbert-esque academic rivals who find themselves in a marriage of convenience so they can take advantage of a partner hire clause in the broken jobs market. Pre-order links below! 💙🩷

Take me back to the future 😎

Hi ✨ Together with Anna Schjøtt Hansen and Tobias Blanke, I organize the #CriticalAI Seminar Series @uvahumanities.bsky.social. This is the 24-25 program🙌 ⚡The sessions are online and open to everyone, find more info and sign up here: t.co/ScqpC7ZDrT

Emily has put together this wonderful list of small, community-minded, Māori & Pasifika, Palestinian, queer, or woman-owned businesses to buy Christmas presents from and it has saved my Covid-suffering ass *and* made me feel good about where I was spending $ emilywrites.substack.com/p/the-best-l...

Some comments from me, @nicgaston.bsky.social, @troybaisden.bsky.social & @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social on the gutting of funding for humanities and social sciences in Aotearoa New Zealand… www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2024/12/04/g...

The NZ government’s decision to slash funding for humanities and social sciences is an act of fear by hapless right-wing reactionaries. This is culture war politics dressed up as economic reform a short-sighted move that sacrifices the long-term prosperity of a nation for cheap ideological points.

It’s a dark day for research in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ramifications for the country are huge. Minister Judith Collins has just announced our blue-skies funder will no longer fund humanities & social science research and that 50% of what is funded must have economic benefit.

A travesty and an embarrassment. Reading this statement was chilling and absolutely heartbreaking.

Been a minute since I've shared this and I have a ton of new followers. If you do #FanStudies you should follow these fine people. And if you want to be added, hit me up! go.bsky.app/C73J94T

the "an average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid is actually just a statistical error. an average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in a cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted

And just like that, after an absurdly short time for consideration and debate, the Australian Senate has passed the Under16s Social Media Ban into law. No good will come of this for young people, and this will not prevent potential harms. If anything, it will increase them.

Such a joy to be studying a topic that so many incredible scholars are publishing on! 🤩 Check out this brand new article from the brilliant @zizilizizi.bsky.social on the politics, technologies, and labour of virtual influencers' racial identities for Velvet Light Trap. 🔥

Honestly feels pretty bleak to see the Spinoff and the Basement both running drives atm to ask to keep existing. These are established orgs--how does any up-and-comer stand a chance? Bleak. Anyway, support them if you can.

4 soundtracks to get to know me

Given Wrapped season is days away, it feels timely that @ninavindum.bsky.social and I's article on our Spotify Unwrapped workshops is available now open access doi.org/10.1080/0958... It outlines our methodological and theoretical framework, and the interconnected exercises in the workshop 🧵

Publication news! 🎺 It’s Wrapped season… and Taylor’s (@taylorannabell.bsky.social) and my article on our Spotify (Un)wrapped project is now out in the Journal of Gender Studies. The article outlines how creative workshops can be used to critically analyse ‘algorithmic events’ like Wrapped.

This time next week we will be welcoming an incredible line-up of researchers to Monash's Caulfield campus in Naarm/Melbourne and via Zoom, for our tenth (!!) Digital Intimacies conference! Draft program here: drive.google.com/file/d/1o3A5...