Event Details

You are invited to a launch event for a new open access edited collection: Bridging Design and Fandom, edited by Dr Naomi Jacobs of the School of Arts. A panel of contributing authors will discuss their work in the collection. This will be a hybrid event with attendance in person or online.

With her new edited collection Bridging Design and Fandom: Fan Studies and Design Research in Conversation, Naomi Jacobs (Design, School of Arts, Lancaster University) opens new exciting opportunities between these two areas of research, and explores the many ways these two fields overlap. To celebrate the publication of this open access volume, we will be holding a launch event with Dr Jacobs and a panel of contributors who have written chapters included in the book. The panel will be moderated by Dr Suzanne Black of the University of Edinburgh.

Divided into thematic sections, the edited collection focuses on pressing current challenge areas that both fan studies and design can speak to; including affordances and platforms, digital fan design, entrepreneurship and consumerism, sustainability, and tourism and urban space. Showcasing the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and how these fields can fruitfully interconnect to create new knowledge and outcomes, contributors with expertise from a wide range of inter and multidisciplinary backgrounds consider both new technologies and traditional practices, giving a holistic overview of how tangible physical practice and intangible digital contexts, theories, and infrastructures can form a part of design in the space of fan research. The collection explores design challenges such as how platform infrastructure underpins much of the modern media landscape in which fans operate, and emerging areas for fan studies such as considering the environmental impacts and sustainability of fan activities, which intersect with major areas of current design research focus.

Speakers:

• Naomi Jacobs (Lancaster University)
• Atanur Andıç (Özyeğin University, Türkiye)
• Bethan Jones (Cardiff University)
• Violet Owen (Lancaster University)
• D. Rodriguez (University of Miami, USA)
• Suzanne Black (Moderator) (University of Edinburgh)